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Class 

Book , H 3 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




W. A. HARPER 



MAKING of MEN 

m 

W-. A. Harper, LL. D. 

President Elon College 




Christian Publishing Association 

DAYTON, OHIO 






-*V 



Copyrighted, 1915, by 
The Christian Publishing Association 



tt£- 



MAY 24 1915 
©CI.A406Q16 



D. D. D. 

Uxori mihi carissimae coniunctissimaeque 



INTRODUCTION 



This brief word introduces to the reading public 
our friend, Dr. W. A. Harper, the genial and efficient 
President of Elon College, in North Carolina, who is 
accustomed to doing many things, and all of them 
well. In this modest volume he embodies good 
counsel, drawn from his own experience in school, 
college, and university, which the young will find prof- 
itable, when they have made personal application of 
the principles so wisely and pleasantly set forth. We 
bespeak for the work a wide circulation and attentive 
perusal. 

Martyn Summerbell. 
Lakemont, N. Y. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Chapter One 
The Making of Men ----- 9 

Chapter Two 
The Crises op Life 21 

Chapter Three 
The Safety of Young People - - - 33 

Chapter Four 
Coveting the Best Gifts 47 

Chapter Five 
The Soul's Most Serious Question - - 63 

Chapter Six 
Striving for the Mastery - -77 

Chapter Seven 
Tile More Abundant Life - - - - 89 

Chapter Eight 
The Ingredients of True Living - - 105 

Chapter Nine 
Life's Basic Principles - 119 

Chapter Ten 
The Use of Talent - - - - - - 133 

Chapter Eleven 
The Contributions of College Life - - 147 

Chapter Twelve 
Achieving Manhood's Goal - 159 



The proper study of mankind is man. — Pope. 

♦v ♦♦ 
After all, the best thing in the community is not a 
mill, nor a mansion, nor a bank, but a man. — Dean 
George Hodges. 

The American college and university cre- 
ates an appreciation of scholarship, knowledge, learn- 
ing, covering all phenomena; it invites a sympathy with 
life, all life; — nothing is foreign to it ichich belongs to 
humanity. — President Charles Franklin Thwing. 

♦*♦ ♦*♦ 

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! 
how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how 
express and admirable! In action how like an angel! 
In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the 
world! The paragon of animals! — Shakespeare. 

There is too much science in the so-called educa- 
tional system and too little God Almighty J 

believe that there is in this country a great spiritual 
awakening, and the Church is beginning to see that it 
has turned over entirely too many of its functions to 
the State. — Vice-President Marshall. 

♦*♦ ♦*♦ 
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? 
And the son of man, that thou visitcst him? 
For thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crownest him with glory and honor. 
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of 

thy hands; 
Thou hast put all things under his feet. 

—Psalm 8: 4-6. 



FOREWORD 



THE addresses composing this treatise on the 
place of religious instruction in college life have 
the one virtue of having been prepared for actual 
college audiences in a small college famous for its high 
moral tone and positive religious influences. The title 
given them is suggested by the first address, The 
Making of Men, in which it is shown that education's 
real business is to make men — men in character as well 
as in body, mind, and culture. 

They are cast in sermonic form not as being by a 
minister, but because they were in each instance 
presented on Sunday and in accordance with the 
traditions of the place of their delivery demanding at 
least two such Sunday utterances each scholastic year 
from the president. The preparation of these addresses, 
giving opportunity to interpret an institution's attitude 
toward the really vital educational question of the day, 
has been a labor of love and joy, and the approval with 
which they were received has made the matter of their 
permanent preservation seem advisable as well as the 
opportunity thus afforded of giving them a larger 
sphere of influence acceptable. 

The reader will note and readily excuse the minor 
repetition of thought, which could not be avoided under 
the conditions of the preparation and delivery of the 
discourses. 

The Author. 
Elon College, N. C, April, 1915. 



RELIGION OR IRRELIGION 



There is no midway ground. Education must be 
had where religion is emphasized or irreligion. It 
has come to such a pass in the public school system of 
many of our States, that the Christian Bible cannot in 
them be read or commented upon. This, however, is 
not so bad, since our children spend the out-of-school 
hours in our homes and can be directed rightly respect- 
ing the vital concerns of life by religious parents. But 
not so when they go to college or preparatory or special 
schools away from home. Then the fatal effects of 
irreligion in the school are immediately felt, for there 
are no restraining, corrective home influences to coun- 
teract the free-thought and license of the schoolroom 
and lecture hall. Parents must choose an institution 
vitalized by a religious atmosphere or one laden with 
deadly, character-sapping irreligion. Between the 
horns of this dilemma there is no middle course. 



CHAPTER ONE 



THE MAKING OF MEN 



Gen. 1 : 26 — "Let us make man" 



THE crowning act of God's creation .was the 
making of man. The crowning work of educa- 
tion is the same — nay more, the sole work of 
education is man-making, and every educational insti- 
tution should pride itself on its supreme privilege to 
become a Mater Virorum, the Mother of men, and 

. . endeavor to achieve this end. The 

f f primary school, the grammar 

! man-making ! school, the high school, the college, 



| education's | the university, the technical school 

| GREAT AIM - J —all of them have their justifica- 

f | tion for being and lodge their 

i.. # .. # ..............,........ # .. # ......„i c } a i m f or support in keeping with 

this purpose, and merit praise or condemnation as they 
further or retard its process. It is a most difficult 
task — this of the making of men. No machine can do 
it ; no ordinary mechanic can engage in it with success. 
It is the most difficult work in the world. And to its 
accomplishment not only education but every depart- 
ment of life makes its prime contribution. To this end 
every industry, every social organization, every 
religious brotherhood must contribute, or stand 
condemned before the tribunal of human progress. To 
this end the world was created and to this end it now 



10 The Making of Men 

devotes its multitudinous energies. When this work 
shall have been wrought with such excellence of work- 
manship as to meet the high expectations of our 
Heavenly Father for man, the world will cease and 
the Church be caught up in the air with her Bride- 
groom, Christ, the Head of the Church. 

But the making of men, like the making of any other 
product, is conditioned by the ideal set before the 
workmen. And with every generation, sometimes even 
.......................................... in shorter time, the ideal changes. 

| | It is easy to look back over the 

I the ideal man | P ast and discern how the ideal 
I conditions f man fashioned the educational 
| education. I system of each pe r i odj and partic- 

| | ularly is it easy to detect the 

A..... a ..... e .....*........e..,^.... e .; 4 power of tnis ideal for tne great 

races whose individuality has stamped itself on the 
world's course of events. The Hebrews, for example, 
considered the ideal man to be a pious, virtuous seeker 
after the holiness commanded by Jehovah, and shaped 
their educational system accordingly. All their schools 
were Bible schools — what we to-day call Sunday- 
schools. The Spartans considered that the ideal man 
should be a splendid specimen of physical manhood — 
superior to any misfortune and equal to any hardi- 
hood. Their educational system was devoted to that 
end and Spartan bravery, the result of it, has remained 
a proverb to this day. The Romans regarded the ideal 
man as the equivalent of the ideal citizen. To them 
religion was patriotism and their every institution was 
directed to the production of patriots. They became 
the lawmakers of the world because they knew best 
how to obey the laws they made, and because their 



The Making op Men 11 

schools taught them the laws of their Twelve Tables 
as the fundamental code of life and conduct. The 
Greeks, and particularly the Athenians, looked at the 
aesthetic element as the prime factor in the ideal man. 
Their educational system gave great space, therefore, 
to cultural studies, to music, both instrumental and 
vocal, to painting, to sculpture, to gymnastics, as the 
means of developing beautiful bodies, and even mathe- 
matics was studied and applied to that same end. And 
their works of art and particularly the statues of their 
divinities fashioned after their notion of the ideal 
human creature, some say reproductions of living 
Greeks, have ever since been the world's admiration 
for beauty and grace. The early Christians were so 
possessed with the beautiful thought of the second 
coming of Christ that they gave their attention to 
celestial citizenship to the neglect of the terrestrial 
type. Their education was shaped by their ideal, 
mystical as it was, and the saints it produced, though in 
monasteries and nunneries, were marvels of devotion 
and self-sacrifice for a noble cause. With the 
Renaissance came the ambition for scholarship, learn- 
ing, intellectual culture. The ideal man was your man 
of giant intellect, of prodigious learning — and while 
occasionally it brought the book-worm, he was atoned 
for in the splendid array of great scholars that this ideal 
produced, men of energy as well as of learning, by 
whom the world greatly profited. 

To define the ideal man of our own time is a far 
more difficult task. I am not willing to believe that 
this age regards the ideal man as the great financier, 
the man who has been able, by energy or trickery, to 
amass a fortune, provided that is all there is to his life. 



UNSOUND 
EDUCATIONAL. 
AIMS TO-DAY. 



12 The Making op Men 

For there would be but few who could be influenced by 
this ideal. Ours is the land of mammon, the land of 
dollars, but how pitifully few are the possessors of the 
........................................... fabulous wealth of our country! 

A score of men control twenty per 
cent, of our nation's entire wealth, 
and less than five per cent, of our 
population control more than 
ninety-five per cent, of all our pos- 
sessions. Surely an ideal which 
excludes all but a mere handful of our millions of 
intelligent people cannot be adequate, is not democratic. 
Nor am I willing to believe that the educational 
reformers who now prate so loudly for the commercial- 
ization of our educational system as being the great 
desire of our people have read the signs of the times 
aright. Neither do I believe that these would-be 
reformers would inaugurate their policies, if they were 
given a chance, nor would the people tolerate them if 
they should be inaugurated. These reformers call for 
practical education, vocational training, specialization 
— and with none of these do I quarrel. But when they 
plead for the elimination of all cultural studies — all 
studies to give us kinship with the past and enable us 
to project ourselves into the future, in their endeavor 
to be strictly practical, even the surface thinker can 
depict under their philosophy only the crassest 
materialism — a materialism which would limit life to 
wealth production and divest it of its essential human 
qualities. Vocational training, too, is all right, in its 
place. But its place, like specialization, is after the 
liberal education is completed and the chosen field of 
duty plain. Critics of democracy have always con- 



The Making op Men 13 

tended that it tends to pull the noblest men down to 
the level of the lowest, in its vain endeavor to treat all 
alike. The modern reformers in education certainly 
merit that opprobrium. Because statistics show that 
very few comparatively pass from the grammar school 
to the high school, and because those who fail so to do 
go into the trades and stores and workshops, these 
prophets of the new educational propaganda readily 
conclude that the high school is fashioned on a wrong 
basis and that, were it made more practical, these 
great numbers would remain in it. They were never 
more mistaken. Those who leave are the children of 
parents without vision, who wish or sometimes 
unfortunately need the wages their children will bring, 
or they are children who despise school and prefer to 
work instead, or worse still to loaf or live a fast social 
life. A little investigation will reveal that the years 
closing the grammar grades and the minimum age 
permissible for child-labor are the same, and this in 
itself should give the new-light educational torch- 
bearers a clue to their problem and point the way to 
its solution. They are, however, with singular blind- 
ness, ignoring this great fact and in their endeavor 
to reach those whom they cannot reach, are throwing 
away their opportunity to help those who really wish 
help. In certain sections of our country there are 
vocational high schools alongside the educational high 
school, and the latter, after the glare of the first year 
or two is vanished, always enrolls more pupils. The 
same is true of the schools of Germany and of other 
countries where the two types of high school operate in 
open competition. Do the reformers know this? And 
is it for that reason that they wish to do away with the 



14 The Making of Men 

educational high school and put in its place the 
vocational one? If so, their triumph will be short- 
lived. 

Further evidence that the present-day educational 
reformers are more concerned about pulling the highest 
type of man down rather than about lifting the lowest 
...........................„............ ? up to his type is found in their 

I assumption that the schools 
democracy on j should fit their pupils to fill their 

pr™mt-day I P lace in life > ana * tnen in providing 

| education. | instruction in manual arts and 

| | bookkeeping as satisfying that 

*..............•..........................* a - m ^ w ith never a mention of the 

higher forms of social service as represented by the 
professions. Is it not the State's duty to see to it that 
the means of education are provided as much for its 
professional men as for its artisans, and on the same 
terms? I do not conceive it to be the duty of the 
State to provide me my special training ;to be a 
carpenter or a brickmason or a bookkeeper and to 
deny you yours to be a lawyer or a school-teacher or 
a doctor or a minister. I do not conceive it to be the 
duty of the State to provide either of us at its expense 
with our special training. Our public schools are not 
apprentice shops, as the reformers would have you 
believe, but schools and their business is not to produce 
an artisan, nor a professional man, but to give their 
pupils that fundamental general education that will 
enable them with greater ease and rapidity and finer 
grasp to become either artisans or professional men, 
as each individual's bent may lead him to elect. And 
when the public schools undertake to depart from this 
sensible aim, they are meriting the opprobrium so 



The Making of Men 15 

often hurled at democracy — that it cannot produce the 
noblest type of citizen, but only the average type. 

But to return to the conception of the ideal man in 
relation to education as he is viewed in our day, we 
observe that there are two conflicting notions current 
r .........*.............. 9 ............... respecting him— one that he 

I J should get all the educational 

another f system can give him with or with- 

1 FALSE | J . 

i present-day | out religion, as he may choose; 
| educational • the other that education without 

l IDEAL. J . 

i | religion is worse than no educa- 

*„..............*..«........•........•..* tion. The issue is plain between 

these two and every man who goes to school in our 
day must meet this issue and dispose of it. Our courts 
have frequently held that religious instruction cannot 
be given out of the Bible in our public school system, 
whether of the secondary or higher order, and 
experience has shown that it is not given apart 
from the Bible in them. Not only can relig- 
ious instruction not be given in these schools, 
but the Bible cannot even be read in many of 
them. A proposed constitutional amendment in North 
Carolina provided for teaching the Bible in the public 
schools, but in the opinion of the ablest lawyers it was 
worthless. They held that the first test case before the 
United States Supreme Court would have resulted in 
having it declared null and void, and so it was never 
submitted to the popular vote. Those who believe in 
the ideal man of the former type rejoiced in this 
disposition of the matter. They wish a man to be 
educated, with religion left out, or rather in a non- 
religious atmosphere. Reason, however, teaches that 



16 The Making of Men 

there is no such thing as a non-religions atmosphere or 
a non-religious education. Religion is not a separate 
department in the curriculum: it is a spirit that 
pervades every study. It is impossible to teach without 
biasing those taught either for or against religion, and 
particularly is this true in those studies which involve 
ethical standards and ideals of life and conduct. A 
concrete illustration is furnished by the graduating 
class of one of America's greatest universities — a 
so-called independent or free institution. Out of five 
hundred men only one made any pretense to religious 
faith, while many Christian colleges have never gradu- 
ated any who were not members of some evangelical 
church. So we see that the ideal of non-religious 
education is unrealizable, unattainable. It leaves the 
individual to choose for himself from considerations 
outside the curriculum, and, if he be religiously 
inclined, most often in opposition to the teaching the 
curriculum offers him. And while religion cannot 1)6 
directly taught in the state schools* and is not taught in 
the non-denominational or independent schools of this 
country, irreligion can be and frequently is taught in 
them, for while only one graduate of the great univer- 



* Realizing this condition the Federal Council of Churches in 
America recently recommended that puhlic school pupils be released 
one-half day each week from their school duties to be given religious 
instruction by their church or the church designated by their parents. 
Also the State universities are providing denominational halls where 
the various communions may employ their own student pastor who 
shall instruct the students and look after their spiritual interests. 
The attempt of the National Educational Association to have a plan 
suggested for ''Introducing Religious Teaching Into the Public Schools," 
defining religion in a way not to run counter to the creeds of Protes- 
tant, Roman Catholic, or Jew, seems incapable of realization. It would 
be a milk-and-water proposition. The Federal Council plan has been 
in successful operation in Gary, Indiana, for several years. The plan 
of denominational dormitories in State universities has the verdict of 
real test to its credit. It is a vital problem and demands earnest 
attention. 



The Making op Men 17 

sity's class mentioned above out of five hundred was a 
professing Christian, the overwhelming majority of the 
others were agnostics, infidels, and skeptics. 

The second ideal would certainly appear to be 
preferable — that the ideal man needs all that the 
educational system, pervaded with religious sentiment, 
? ..... e .. e ........„....*..... e .. e .. e .. # ... can give him in order best to serve 

I f his fellow man. This ideal does 

| the true I not stand for sectarian religious 
I educ^tionai. ! instruction, but far the religious, 
| ideal. ? Christian atmosphere under de- 

| 1 vout Christian teachers, with not 

i..... 9 ........ 9 .-.. e .. 8 ..,..e...„... e ..i a part but ever y one f them 

Christians, thus producing an atmosphere that predis- 
poses every breather of it in the direction of the 
Christian life. And since the religious element is that 
which leavens the entire lump of man's nature, this type 
of college will produce the best type of man — the ideal 
man, the man imbued with the spirit of the gospel, 
which is the spirit of humanitarianism, of helpful serv- 
ice to fellow man. The present-day ideal man is the 
man who can best serve society and human brotherhood. 
It is undoubtedly the educated Christian man who can 
fulfil that ideal best, because no man is complete whose 
religious nature is undeveloped, and no incomplete man 
can serve his fellow man best. 

The modern educational aim, then, when broadly 
and rightly interpreted, is a composite of all aims that 
have preceded it. It contains elements of the desire of 
the Eenaissance leaders for sound scholarship, of the 
Athenian love of culture and beauty in their relation 
to life, of the Koman devotion to the welfare of the 
state, of the Spartan ambition for a vigorous body, of 



18 The Making of Men 

the Hebrew striving to please God, and of the early 
Christian's anxious endeavor to prepare for celestial 
mansions, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
........................................... The student who comes to college 

f J as if on an excursion for recrea- 

I the f tion and pleasure, viewing it as 

CONSTITUENT 

* elements I a sort °^ vacation season, spent 

| of this ideal. f amid delightful surroundings, will 

| | not become your ideal man. He 

i.......,.................................* mus t gi ve attention to scholarship. 

But scholarship is not all of college life. If so, the 
book-worm would be the ideal product, which he isn't. 
Attention also must be given to the aesthetic side of life 
and studies such as music, art, expression, literature, 
philosophy, history, and the like must lend a halo of 
culture and refinement in order to the best results. 
Matthew Arnold defined culture as acquaintance with 
the best that has been said, done, and thought in 
previous ages, and regarded such acquaintance as 
essential to correct conceptions of life and duty and 
adequate enjoyment of the high privilege of living. And 
he was right, but not entirely so, for life is more than 
culture, and some of the most cultured men have been 
the biggest oppressors of their fellows. Besides culture 
and scholarship, the ideal educated man of to-day needs 
respect for the rights of others and for the majesty of 
the law, such a devotion to law and the duties of 
citizenship as the old Boman education of the best days 
produced. Our civilization needs this ingredient and 
needs it sorely, and it is coming, coming particularly 
among college students who now respect each other's 
fundamental rights as they did not even a generation 
ago — and this is one of the most hopeful signs of our 



The Making of Men 19 

times, since college men make the sentiment of our 
country in large measure. Then the ideal educated man 
needs, must have, a vigorous body. This is a strenuous 
age, an age tense with nervous energy, pulsing with life, 
and exacting on all who essay to do its work. A man 
with a weak body, in these stirring times, need not 
expect to attain any other than a mediocre position of 
usefulness, no matter how brilliant his mind or devout 
his purpose. Therefore colleges provide, at great 
expense, the means of physical development, and insist 
that they be used, but not to the exclusion of scholar- 
ship, culture, and obedience to regulations needful in 
preparing for the duties of citizenship and helpful in 
the process of man-making. The ideal physical man is 
not the prize-fighter, nor the professional athlete, but 
your man who combines in his make-up mental as well 
as physical soundness. But excellent as scholarship is, 
charming as culture is, beautiful as law-abiding 
patriotism is, necessary as a vigorous physical manhood 
is, needful as are all these, they are not enough. That 
which makes man man is that he is made in God's 
image, is that his is a divine nature, that he is destined 
to see Him as He is. In order to be a completely made 
man, he shall need to give heed in his preparation to 
his divine nature, to the cultivation of his divine 
attributes, that he may grow in greater likeness to his 
Father and be prepared to stand before His judgment 
throne unabashed. The scholarship of the Kenaissance, 
the culture of Athens, the citizenship of Rome, the 
Spartan manhood — worthy ideals though they are — 
can never satisfy the higher demands of our divine 
kinship with God. The old Hebrew was right in his 
anxiety to do the will of Jehovah and the early 



20 The Making of Men 

Christian was right in his endeavor to prepare for 
Heaven, for we shall need to do God's will in this life 
in order to inherit our mansion in the celestial city. 






CHAPTER TWO 



THE CRISES OF LIFE 



Acts 21:Jfl — "And falling into a place where two 
seas met" 



THE meeting of two seas, which circumstance 
brought St. Paul's ship to wreck, is a perilous 
condition frequently confronted in human life. 
Such a condition, where the streams of life's influences 
cross and recross, we style a crisis. Provided it is suc- 
cessfully coped with, a crisis means the termination of 
.......................................... that which has been and the be- 

| ? ginning of that which was not 

I crises may I Defore - S° many times a crisis 
I help f means death to that which was 

f OR MENACB - i without power to go forward to 
f | that which might be, that most 

i.................. M# ..^....^..„....»i p e0 pi e regard such a situation as 

equivalent to disaster. But it should not be so. Unless 
the seed fall into the ground and die, it cannot bring 
forth some forty, some sixty, and some an hundredfold. 
Equally so in life, unless the crisis comes, progress is 
impossible and the life is already fruitless. The crises 
of life are the molting seasons, when the worthless 
shells of our former smaller lives are cast aside, and we 
enter a newer freedom and a larger power. They 
are the times when two seas meet, to be sure, and those 
two seas contain in them the instrumentalities capable 



22 The Making of Men 

of producing destruction, but these crises are also the 
proper time for the chrysalis to become the butterfly. 

The crises of life, being therefore according to 
nature and inevitable, should be made the allies of 
progress lest they become engines of destruction. This 
........................................... much desired result can be 

f | achieved by a careful study of 

| they are ! their times and causes and the 
f natural and | wise application of principles that 

* INEVITABLE. i i n • e . ^ j «• 

| J shall insure safety and ward oft 

| j disaster. These crises come in 

i......-.........................„...... A y 0ut j l an( j ft j g th e high privilege 

as well as solemn duty of parents and of those standing 
in the relation of parents to act as pilots in such places 
where two seas are known to be prone to meet, and so 
to prevent shipwreck of the young life or even damage 
to its craft. It is therefore well for parents to study 
their children and for all who have to do with the life 
and character-development of young people to do like- 
wise. How can we best serve the next generation is 
the burning question that confronts us all, because it 
i^ in the twist we give the character of the generation 
that shall succeed us that we shall make our greatest 
contribution to human progress and uplift. 

The study of childhood has been elevated into a 
science now — the science of Paidology* — and (every 
adult is under obligation to verse himself in it. The 
world, since Christ's famous exaltation of childhood, 
has been looking toward the child and endeavoring to 



* B?r. H. O. Chrisman, of Ohio University, or one of his pupils, 
on April 26, 1893, coined the word Paidology, which is now current 
throughout the world as the proper designation of the scientific study 
of childhood. One International Congress of Paidologists has been 
held and many authors have written on the new science. 



The Crises of Life 23 

serve him. The Puritan with his austerity and rigor- 
ousness thought he could best serve him by keeping him 
quiet and in the background. His philosophy failed. 
Some parents to-day, far too many 
for our country's good, seeing the 
failure of the Puritanic form of 
family government, have surren- 



• IN ORDER TO 
? MEET THEM 
| CAREFUL STUDY 

• IS NECESSARY 

? AND ABUNDANT 

I SYMPATHY. 

I 
•..s..»»«..»..«..«..»..a»e..c»e»«»i 



dered their God-given right to 
direct the life of their children and 
sit in watchful waiting with fear 
and trembling while the young people of their homes 
work out their own salvation. In most cases such 
apostacy on the part of parents leads not to the 
salvation, but to the loss, of their children. And yet 
there are great philosophers and profound psychologists 
and expert paidologists who argue scientifically that 
that is the proper course to pursue. They declare that 
normal development is what the child should have, 
whereas normal development for the average child 
means a reproduction of savagery and the return of the 
race to the barbaric type. In fact, that is what they 
demand and expect. They designate the result "recapit- 
ulation," and assure us that it is divinely arranged that 
every normal child should "recapitulate" in his life all 
the long, hard struggle of the race from savagery to 
civilization. I am ready to grant that this result will 
ensue, if the child is left to himself, except that 
civilization would not be achieved and certainly no 
progress would be possible. But God never intended it 
so. He arranged a long period of childhood and youth 
for the human being that parents might impress upon 
children the ideals and attainments of previous genera- 
tions and so prevent the loss of the culture and progress 



24 The Making op Men 

already achieved. The period of childhood and youth 
is the period of storing up the past and of quickening 
the ideals of later life, but if that period is neglected, it 
will necessarily entail the failure of human society. 

Parents of vision, therefore, parents who compre- 
hend their divinely appointed mission, will be neither 
Puritanic nor recapitulatory in their methods of dealing 
r ........^-.......^.-. B .......... with their children. They will not 

| £ try to curb the loyalty, energy, and 

I and workers | enthusiasm of their children, nor 

I peo™/^ I y et wil1 the . v hide a ™™ d the 

| have both, f corner and leave the disposition of 
I I these three great ingredients of 

o..e..<,.. s ..«.. 9 ..^.....»..,........«..i child-life in the hands of the 

children themselves. They will study the nature of 
their children and the laws of their development. The 
times and the seasons of stress and strain and storm of 
their life will be known to them, and when each crisis 
appears they will be ready with the assistance of the 
expert pilot, who knows all the shoals and the cross- 
currents of life's sea, to bring the young craft through 
to a successful and happy harbor. And what grander 
privilege can parents and other workers with children 
and young people covet than this — the privilege of 
saving a life and an immortal soul at once? This 
privilege is best conceived in the spirit of humility, the 
spirit of true childhood, and wrought out in terms of 
that oft-quoted aphorism from Solomon — "Train up a 
child in the way he should go." Training — that is the 
idea — not curbing, not stifling, nor yet giving the rein 
to those too immature and unskilled to control, but 
wisely directing, carefully training the young, with 
their beautiful loyalty, their abounding energy, and 



The Crises op Life 25 

their consecrated enthusiasm, to be trained leaders of 
the race to righteousness when their manhood's days 
have come. 

To do this necessary work and to do it properly is 
the most important thing the adult population will 
ever be called upon to undertake. It is more important 
.^....................„................ that this work be done well than 

| f that the Hudson be shot under- 

f which is the f neath by a tunnel or that the 

I 7™ NEXT 1 Panama Canal be di SS ed OT that 

I generation. | the Anti-Trust Program be put 
I | through. For when men and 

;..... ..*.......,.........„............„i women <j their duty by the 

children and the young people in their homes and 
round about them, these other things will be attended 
to, and rightly, because of the ideals and characters 
it shall have been their pleasure and privilege to have 
developed in the leaders of our national life. Yet many 
parents give more attention to the breeding of chickens 
and hogs than they do to their children. Burbank has 
done a wonderful work with the soulless things of our 
gardens and orchards, but where is your Burbank in 
the development and improvement of childhood and 
its conditions? We have our Ben Lindsey, it is true; 
but he is not the star of first magnitude for which we 
long nor is he appreciated as he should be. Every 
parent, every worker with children and youth, should 
be a specialist in this most delicate art and men should 
give more heed to the needs and necessities and proper 
conditions for growth and fruition of their children 
than to tomatoes and cabbage. They should at least 
employ the same judicious care in ridding the lives of 
their children of hurtful influences as they do in 



26 The Making op Men 

removing the weeds and grasses from among the 
vegetables of their gardens, and in order to do this 
they will need to know the crises of childhood and 
youth which long observation has made evident as 
characterizing marks in the growth and development 
of each human being. 

These crises are many. They are frightful with 
consequences touching the character of those who must 
pass them. Parents and workers with the young can 
....................................... be of tremendous assistance in 

f f insuring their emergence — and 

? help needed f their emergence on the proper 

| conscience I bank of lifes river - Among these 
awakens. f crises comes first the awakening of 



? conscience — the time when the 
"* men or women in embryo first 
become conscious of right and wrong. They cease to be 
mere innocent animals then, and become human beings, 
divinely human in that, as Eve's tempter said, they 
know good and evil. Their parents should help them 
over this crisis by supplying abundant motives for 
choosing the good and the right and for refusing the 
evil and the wrong. Parents should never be satisfied 
to say to a child, "Don't do that," but with every 
prohibition should go an accompanying, "Do this," and 
by that deft tact which love dictates the Tightness of 
the "Do this" should ever impress itself upon the child. 
The period of adolescence has received treatment 
and attention of a most thorough and searching type, 
because it is a crisis so marked that every one notices 
it. It has been styled the storm and stress period of 
life — the time when many seas meet and when the stress 
on character is extremelv accentuated. This is the 



The Crises of Life 27 

period of the "big boy" and the "giggling girl" problems 
about which the religious writers tell us so much. It 
is the period when the most important twist is received 

g.,.....,..,..,.*^. 8 by the character, whether it be in 

f ? the direction of the right or the 

J and when the I wron g. It is therefore the period 

STORMS OF ? „ ° , .7 ■ - 

adolescence | of our greatest opportunity for 
break thick f service to the next generation. 

AND FAST. * 

| Just at this period the adult, 
•-•...-^.•-•".-.-.-•..•-.-•.....i h owever> seems to lose his grip on 

the young, and so does the Church. The Church loses 
seventy-five per cent, of its boys and sixty-five per cent, 
of its girls during this trying time, because it does not 
know how to handle the meeting of the seas in their 
lives. Things are changing for the better along this 
line and the Church is beginning to adapt itself to the 
exigencies of the case by providing avenues for the 
proper expenditure of the energy, enthusiasm, and 
loyalty of young people through organizations suited to 
their nature and through opportunities to render 
service worth while for the Kingdom and for their 
fellow man, and while mistakes have been made and will 
continue to be made, we may with confidence declare 
that the Church is on the right line * at last and that 
ultimate victory shall flow to her banners. And in this 
victory parents and workers with youth outside the 
Church will have their precious labor of love rewarded 
richly just in proportion as they shall, through careful 
study of the crisis surging in the soul of every young 
man or woman during the stormy days of adolescence, 
come to sympathize with the young and so to qualify 



* See that splendid volume by Hutchins : "Graded Social Service 
for the Sunday School." The University of Chicago Press. 



28 The Making of Men 

themselves to pilot them safely through its seething 
waters to the calm haven of life. A very practical and 
serious issue from the educational standpoint is raised 
at this juncture since the days of later adolescence 
coincide with the days of college life for most college 
students. How necessary then, it is that colleges be 
chosen in which the religious atmosphere is present and 
pervasive, for not only do we lose the most of our boys 
and girls at this age, but we also gain the great majority 
of those who are ever to accept Christ's leadership ! 

The crisis that arises when the life-work is to be 
chosen is an inviting, yet a fearful, one. A mistake here 
may mar what would otherwise be a brilliant career. 
r-« ■■■■■-■■>...,..r ■■■,■■..,.■■,■■, Adults should be very cautious in 
| | obtruding their own views and 

| and likewise | ideals too forcibly at this juncture. 

J m C the SING I Man ? a man whom God dedicated 

f life-work. f to the ministry has failed as a 

| | lawyer or physician or business 

i...............-.„...................„i man Tj ie young should be 

allowed to choose their own vocation, after careful 
advice and prayerful counsel with their elders. And 
the chiefest consideration in every such selection of the 
life-work should be, Does God really want me to do this 
thing rather than some other? We should lose sight 
of the remuneration or honor or social prestige which 
will come to us in our work and should concentrate our 
attention on the service we can render and our fitness 
by divine appointment for that service. Tf we will do 
that, the remuneration and the honor and the social 
prestige will inevitably come. There are so many 
misfits in life that too careful judgment cannot be 
employed at this crisis. So many men are destined to 



The Crises op Life 29 

achieve a mediocre success, because they chose their 
life-work without due consideration or from improper 
considerations or entered upon it without proper 
preparation. My advice to young people is that they 
leave themselves open to conviction as to their sphere 
of life-work until they cannot escape entering the field 
they finally choose. We speak of a call to the ministry. 
My thought is that men are called of God also to other 
lines of work, if they will but hear His voice and hearken 
to His word. As the young man's, or woman's, education 
advances, an impression will ripen into a definite choice 
of life-work and that choice will be right. Herein is a 
serious weakness of vocational training, as it is now 
advocated, — it encourages the making of a choice of 
life-work before the range of human service is broad 
enough to warrant it, and then later it is too late to 
change. Therefore let young people enlarge their vision 
all possible by thorough education and, in the light of 
human need and their ability and inclination to serve, 
let them choose the work to which they feel God in His 
infinite wisdom has appointed them, and equally let 
every parent and worker for the good of young people 
encourage them to do this very thing, at the same time, 
affording them every possible means of thorough 
preparation. 

We must content ourselves now with brief reference 
to only one of the other many crises of childhood and 
youth — the crisis which comes when the human soul, 
conscious of its own weakness, seeks a higher leadership 
for its life, — when it is confronted with accepting or 
rejecting God. This is life's most important crisis, 
and so its most fatal. Tt is the testing time par 
excellence. The issues not of life alone, but of eternity, 



30 The Making of Men 

are now to be settled. Here parents can be angels of 
light leading their children to the Father. Here 
those who work with young people need the wisdom of 
serpents and the harmlessness of doves — for it were 
better that a mill-stone were hanged about the neck of 
•„..................,.................*.. each such worker and that he be 

f but most of | cast into the sea than that he 

I ^ueItion of* J should offend such a little one - 
| the soul's | And may I say just here, what is 

f w™e L is | entirely true, that the young in 
| to be settled, f making this momentous decision 
4............„^.^...^.„....„...,„i w -jj k e j n fl uence( j m ore by how the 

adults around them live than by what they profess. 
Profession is necessary — God provides for it — but 
practice is its outward counterpart and the circle of 
the Christian life must ever be incomplete without it. 
It is a sad commentary on the daily life of the adult 
Church member that seventy per cent, of our Sunday- 
school pupils never join Church. The Sunday-school 
teaches Christianity all right, but we Christians do not 
illustrate it properly in our life and conduct. And I 
will say unequivocally that every child can be brought 
into the Kingdom and will be, when the adults nearest 
its life and responsible for its character illustrate in 
daily living the holy principles of our faith. We must 
not insult God by imputing to the immutable decrees of 
His will responsibility for the loss of a single human 
soul. God never willed that any man should perish. 
The invitation is to all, and they to whom the innocent, 
plastic babe is entrusted are responsible before God for 
the failure to mold that plastic soul in the image of 
God and to make it the natural thing for it to choose 
Him as the day-star of their life's hope. The home has 



The Crises op Life 31 

not done its duty, if any child of it fails to accept 
Christ as leader and guide. 

I would not, however, deny that a child that has 
been led to accept Christ can later fall away from Him 
in spite of the influence of parents, but such cases are 
... . rarer than one would think, if 

f I parents use their best judgment in 

| and is not to f providing wholesome influences for 
I whmcSe I their children when not in their 
| is entered, f home. I heard a man say recently 
| f that he did not expect to send his 

i....................................„.„i ckiidj^n awa y to college, because 

a certain young man of his neighborhood had just been 
graduated from a famous seat of higher learning with- 
out any interest in the Church or the religious life, 
whereas before going to college he had been a devout 
Christian and a devoted worker in Sunday-school. 
This young man had been unfortunate in his choice of 
a college and had found one where the Christian life is 
not insisted upon as the noblest of all attainments. 
Not all of his teachers were unchristian men. I know 
some of them to be devout followers of the Master, but 
some of them were otherwise and the otherwise ones 
got possession of the young man's life and caused the 
Christian ideal to loom small in his eyes, and in the 
vain search for largeness of life and a false freedom he 
had lost interest in his own soul. Vice-president Mar- 
shall recently * said that we need more God in our 



* See Baltimore Sun, May 18, 1914, where the vice-president is 
quoted as saying : "There is this thing wrong in many of the churches, 
that because church and state are separate, and the state makes the 
schools, the church feels itself absolved from any duty in the direction 
of the education of youth. The state is permitted to mold children 
from the age of six up through the time when they are going through 
colleges, where many of the professors are agnostics and atheists. 

There is too much science in the so-called educational system 

and too little God Almighty." 



32 The Making of Men 

education, and Mr. Marshall is right. We need God in 
our education, and unless we can have Him we will do 
well to remain ignorant and unlearned. For we now 
understand that head-education without heart-culture 
is not only fundamentally defective, but positively 
ruinous to character and absolutely destructive of the 
noblest things and sentiments of life. And no college 
can be said to have done its full duty if a single one of 
its graduates is ignorant of Jesus Christ and without 
the joy of His salvation in the heart. 



CHAPTER THREE 



THE SAFETY OF YOUNG PEOPLE 



2 Samuel 18:29 — "Is the young man Absalom safe?" 



IT IS a rare thing in these days of all but universal 
enlightenment to find an open enemy of education. 
It has been demonstrated so many times in the 
world's history that the educated man is superior to the 
ignorant in everything, that it is useless waste of time 
and worry of patience to undertake to prove that 
.......................................e... education is necessary to the 

} f attainment of the individual man's 

I aiau men I hig nes t ano ^ hest achievement in 
| BEiiiEVE in f life. Education is necessary to 
| education. I the leaderg in all the realms of 

| I activity — physical, moral, intel- 

A..o...........,..^o..........-........i i ec tual, social, financial, literary, 

spiritual — in no department of human endeavor can a 
man do his best, attain his highest, without education. 
And this is but right — because education is the develop- 
ment of a man, his unfolding, his leading out* to borrow 
the Latin meaning of the word, and whatever con- 
tributes to this end must needs add to man's capacity to 
do more and be more than he otherwise could do or be. 



* Henry van iVyke thinks that some things ought to be spanked 
out of men when they are children, if education is to do its real work. 
It would he nearer the truth to say that these objectionable things 
would never have got in the children, if parents and others had done 
their full part by them. There are no inherently bad young people, 
but many of them have had their energy misdirected. What therefore 
needs to he spanked out ought never to have got in. 



34 The Making of Men 

But — while we appreciate education, while we 
would not discount it in the least, while we would 
strive to realize its fullest possible good in our own life, 
yet we cannot escape the fact that there are dangers 
connected with its getting, with the processes of it, that 
challenge our thought and compel our attention. Have 
we not known education to ruin men? Did not our 
.......................................... parents or our guardians, did not 

f f many of us ourselves, ponder long 

| choose your j what college we should attend? 
| college | Did not we and they realize that 
I WITH CARE * | choosing the college that is to be 
| f the scene of a young person's intel- 

*....................,..„..,„...,........* i ec ^ ua i metamorphosis is one of 

the weightiest issues of life and carries with it great 
possibilities — possibilities of both good and evil — of 
danger and of safety to youth? Are not many of the 
loved ones at home at this very hour asking the same 
anxious question propounded the messengers by King 
David in regard to the brilliant, but dissolute Absalom 
— Is the young man safe? Is my son safe? Is my 
daughter safe ? 

Yes, they are asking these questions in their heart 
of hearts to-day — and they are asking them with all 
? ......„,.e.........„..........„....... earnestness, even though they 

| f pondered long and well before 

f parents, too, • arriving at a decision as to where 

: SHOULD : 

| exercise | to send the idol of their love to 
f caution f college. It is but natural that 

s HERE ? 

I I they should, because they know, 

i..........................,........,,.....* w b e ther we students do or not, 

that college life is beset with many dangers, many 
pitfalls, many snares and wily traps. 



The Safety of Young People 35 

To you splendid young people who have already 
entered or are about to enter college, let me 
point out briefly some of the most insidious of these 
snares and then suggest the way of escape from 
them, that your college career, by judicious order- 
? -....„,...„«......„....„^......... ? ing of life and conduct and 

f strict adherence thereto may 
the purpose t be safe— that, when your col- 
or f lege days are over, you may be 

• THIS MESSAGE, i ■, 1 n, 

J BA^. | ag p ure ag wlien y OU le ^ y Qur 

| | parental roof and stronger in 

i............ M .„....„...,„.„.........i ever y £ Der f character and man- 
hood and womanhood because of the preparation days 
rightly spent at college. 

One of the most alarming dangers of modern educa- 
tion in some quarters is higher criticism. I do not 
wish to be understood as decrying scholarship, research, 
•»•..•........*..*......*.*............ learning, thorough investigation. 

| These are the things for which the 
true f college exists, which the Church 

SC re°s L tTon IP I demands, and of which she stands 
faith. | in need. The Middle Ages, with 

| | their low moral state, so low as 

4.........„.«.~...............^.,...„i | Q mer ^ f or them the title of the 

Dark Ages, give ample proof that the Church has 
everything to lose and nothing to gain by setting itself 
against learning and education. But this is not to 
welcome higher criticism nor plead for its necessity. A 
higher critic is a scholar with the profession on his 
lips of a Christian, but with a skeptic's heart and 
attitude. It is an old saying that people usually find 
what they look for. Even astronomers have to make 
allowance for what they call the personal equation in 



36 The Making op Men 

recording observations. When we deal with a matter 
as ethereal and personal as religion is, the attitude of 
the investigator is all the more important. The man 
who regards the authority of the Bible as of the same 
type as the authority of a book on ethics is not the 
proper person to investigate the authenticity of the 
Bible nor of any fact in it. He who undertakes to 
investigate the Scriptures must believe them before- 
hand, recognize them as superior to any other book, as 
in a class by themselves; equipped with such an attitude 
he is prepared to investigate and to have his investiga- 
tion respected. 

The attitude of the natural scientist toward the teach- 
ings of natural science, that all its teachings are provis- 
.....................................0... ional, temporary, and subject to 

| change without notice, is not the 

religion is f proper attitude toward the relig- 

^T T , S A AN°TRT C f ! { io ™ Hfe and its teachings. Relig- 

| a fine art. f ion is not a natural, but a revealed, 

| | science — more correctly speaking, 

i................ 4 ......................»i ft | g no ^ a gc j ence a { a u ? k u t an ar ^ 

the art of getting on right terms with God and our 
fellow men, and the principles of right and truth under- 
lying that art are eternal and not subject to revision. 
........................................... N° young man or young woman 

f avoid colleges f is safe who is in an institution of 
| where higher f learning where the higher critical 
I THEm C DEZv I view-point is the pier from which 
f seed in f he is compelled to begin his voyage 
| PRECIOUS SOTI • I over life's sea. But in this regard, 
4...........,........... 9 .. 8 ..... ..,*., a ..s students in Christian colleges are 

safe. They rarely have a higher critic in their 
faculty. Their professors respect and honor the 



The Safety op Young People 37 

Word of God as the fundamental chart of life and 
accept it as the sufficient rule of faith and practice in 
religious conduct, and deplore the tendency in many 
places to belittle the worth and disparage the value of 
the Book of books. 

The second danger which confronts college students 
is like unto the first, but is found in courses given 
under the Department of Social Science, and not under 
........................................ the Biblical Department. The 

I social science I men > in man ? institutions of 
? in many f higher learning, who head these 

1 COLLEGES IS A ] -, , , tit t • -, 

I cloak for I departments, would be higher 
f higher | critics if they were Biblical teach- 

CRITICISM 

| I ers or expounders. They have 

i........... 8 ...............-,.........„i rea( j .Q ie j^le, however, and are 

loud in their praises of it as a veritable storehouse of 
rich sociological material. They bid their students read 
and reread it, not for food for their heart-hunger nor 
drink for their soul-thirst, but for the sociological 
matter it contains. Often sociological material from 
other quarters is found which conflicts with that of the 
Bible — and the Bible is declared to be in error. These 
distinguished doctors reason in a circle. They will 
assure you that their science must not be condemned 
because it discovers things not in the Bible, since the 
Bible is not authority on sociology; but in the next 
breath will deny the authenticity of the Bible because 
it conflicts with their theories. Oh, consistency ! They 
will bolster up their science, which is always subject 
to revision even in its fundamental principles without 
notice, when the Bible seems to lend color to their 
tenets, and then they condemn the Bible and belittle it 
when it challenges any of their pet theories. You have 



38 The Making op Men 

heard the expression, to use a man; that seems to be 
what the higher critical doctrinaires in Social Science 
evidently do with the Bible. They use it — and then 
abuse it. 

If many of the things reported as being enunciated 
by these teachers are actually taught by them, the 
farther the young people of our land keep from them, 
.......................................... the better it will be for our land 

f | and our young people. The Chris- 

| away with J tian college, too, will have its De- 
? msmioirs I P ar tnient of Social Science, but it 
I teachings! f will respect the Bible first and So- 
f t rial Science second.* In it you will 

a..-...............-....................a j^jjj no rigk of h av i n g vour spirit- 
ual eyes blinded by the exaltation of sociology at the 
expense of theology, but you will see that sociology-, 
rightly taught, is a powerful handmaid to the correct 
understanding of the revealed Word of God as we have 
it in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testaments. 
re ..-....^....^.........-....-.. The third danger toward which 

| f I would direct your attention is 

| freedom to f the free-thought with respect to all 

I kin X to free- I issues of life and conduct which in 

| thought. f many places is characteristic of a 

I | great many college men. They 

i.................... e ........,...„... e .,i a pp roacn every matter with the 

skeptical air and are never sure of anything or any 
principle. To them nothing is too sacred or hallowed 



* A book on Political Economy was recently turned down by a state 
institution as a text-book. The author of the book wrote and asked 
for the reason for its rejection. The answer he received was : "Your 
first sentence was enough to condemn the book." The first sentence 
reads : "The source of all wealth is the beneficence of God." Quoted 
from The CJiristian Sun. 



The Safety of Young People 39 

to be doubted and scoffed at. They scoff at religion 
as the proper thing for women and children — they 
doubt its value for men. They place a question point 
after every positive statement of every book they read, 
of every lecture they hear. They boast of their freedom 
of thought, forgetting that the truest freedom is that 
which subjects itself to law and order and tries to har- 
monize with surrounding conditions and circumstances. 
The real free man is not he who kicks against the 
laws of the land, but he who obeys them. Those college 
men who indulge in free-thought and the teachers who 
? ..... ft .....^........ e ...„............. encourage it, respecting the funda- 

f | mental institutions of life and 

I be a real | society, need to do sober thinking 

: FREE MAN ? J ' f 

| through I as to the consequence of such 

sober f intellectual license. Liberty ought 

| | never to become license. If any of 

i.. 8 .. e .-........... e .. 8 .. e .. w ..,„ a „ c ..i yQu ]iave gone tQ co u e g e expecting 

to find such an atmosphere of so-called freedom of 
thought, may you be disappointed. I would have you 
think, but I would not have you assume the skeptic's 
interrogatory attitude toward all the issues and condi- 
tions of life. We are sure that an institution which 
encourages or tolerates such a spirit is not a safe place 
for the unfolding of young man- and woman-hood. 

From what has been said you perceive that Christian 
education is the age's need. But what is Christian 
education? I once heard a college president say in 
answer to that question, that Christian education 
results where a Christian teaches. Yet that same man 
at that time was presiding over an institution in which 
half the teachers were either skeptics or higher critics. 
In the face of all that, he maintained that his was a 



40 The Making of Men 

Christian institution and of a nobler type than the 
denominational college, because it was a state institu- 
tion and included all the people. Christian education 
........................................... cannot be had unless all who teach 

£ J are Christians, humble, child-like, 

! what is ! trusting Christians, who never 
f christian f scoff at religion, who never 

• EDUCATION? : , ,, ,, ., . ,, „... 

| | deny the authority of the Bible, 

| f who never minimize or speak 

•...........•........,........«..„...„.„* slightingly or disparagingly of 

the Church. 

Even this is not enough ; the atmosphere surround- 
ing the college must be pregnant with spirituality. 
That is why it is best for a college to be situated away 
...... 8 ..»...........,..... # „............. from the distractions and allure- 

I | ments of the gay, maddening, 

| conditions | dissipating throng of the city. The 

| for omusTiLr I colle g e in a cit J has the cit J 
| education. I atmosphere around it and does 

| | not, cannot, produce as fine a type 

A........,........,.....,...„ d ..... # ...„i Q £ Christian education as the 

college in a college town, in a town which is the college, 
for such a college can make its own atmosphere. And 
they who have grown to intellectual manhood in such 
an atmosphere can never forget the splendid privilege 
they have enjoyed. It has entered into the warp and 
woof of their life and given to them an outlook unat- 
tainable without such an atmosphere and yet for which 
many a disappointed soul would give all it has to 
receive. 

Education trains the head. Christian education has 
a larger task — it cannot stop with head training alone. 
It must aim at the production of an all-round man, an 



The Safety of Young People 41 

all-round woman. I do not believe an educational 
institution can rightly lay claim to being denominated 
Christian, unless it strives to produce a complete 

citizen — phvsically, mentallv, so- 

| I cially, morally, spiritually. No 

f christian \ man w ] 10 j s deficient in any of 

? EDUCATION i ,, , . . , 

1 produces the ! these regards is a complete man 
complete | an( j no education which fails to 

! CITIZEN. | . " ... 

I | equip its pupils in any of these 

i..,............„...............,.. 8 ...„* directions can be properly styled 

Christian. We cannot leave the policeman to look 
after the conduct and the minister the souls of our 
pupils, while we teachers look after their intellectual 
development. We must do all three and more besides. 
Christian education must give attention to the body. 
Did not the sacred writer say that our bodies are the 
temples of the living God? Can we as Christians afford 
? ................. 9 ............„.„..... 1 not to give strict heed to our 

t take good t D °dies? Can a Christian institu- 
? care of the T tion remain one and not give 
| B ° D T Y rDo A A T IS J attention to the physical well- 
| christian ! being of its pupils? We have 
I | learned that a sound body is an 

i..........................,........ # ...„i esgen ft a i basis for well-propor- 
tioned, symmetrical development in every other depart- 
ment of our being. Our body is our fundamental part 
in this world. We must take care of it, if we are to 
prosper and do our full part as men and women in the 
world's arena of action. When a Christian college 
therefore forbids the use of cigarettes and discourages 
the use of tobacco in every form, it is acting within its 
own province, doing what if it were not to do, it would 
forfeit its right to be called Christian. When it encour- 



42 The Making of Men 

ages its pupils to take exercise and provides for 
athletics and physical culture, it is again doing its 
plain, simple Christian duty, and it is also the duty of 
the pupils in such an institution to take advantage of 
these opportunities for physical self-improvement. 
When I commend athletics, I do not mean that it should 
be exalted above every other feature of college life, but 
that all should enter into the sports and all derive good 
from them. Not the spectators at, but the partakers 
in, athletic events derive good and gain benefit. Let 
every student resolve that he will partake as well as 
spectate. Thus will he be physically safe. 

Of course a college ought to furnish mental develop- 
ment; all grant that. Yet I have known students who 
did not get it, because they did not study. Others have 
.-..........,...,..<,..................... not received the development they 

| f were entitled to and deserved to 

I study— but • nave because they picked out the 
I not on | easiest courses allowed by the elec- 

f sunday. j tiye gjstem still others have 

| I studied too much. Make it the 

A..........^..^..„...,.....,...... w .„i ru j e Q £ y 0ur jif e ^0 study during 

study hours and give yourself to the other things of 
college life at other times. Do not at all study on 
Sunday. It is not necessary — never is, if we do our 
duty at other times, nor do those who indulge in it in 
any way surpass or excel those who do not, according 
to my observation. Furthermore, it is contrary to 
God's Word to do it. Let me suggest to you further 
that you systematize your work — have certain hours 
for certain things, and do those things then. W T hen 
they are done, give attention to other things. Such 
self-discipline will count wonderfully in your success 



The Safety of Young People 43 

in after-life and make it unnecessary for you to study 
on the Sabbath day. 

A Christian college must also give attention to the 
social life. By this I do not simply mean that a college 
ought to provide social intercourse and give attention 
........................................... to the social graces of life, but far 

more. The social life as here used 
means whatever pertains to our 
association with our fellows. You 
have the right to expect your 



• THE SOCIAL 

LIFE IN 
| COLLEGE 

• SHOULD TRAIN 
f FOR 



| CITIZENSHIP - J college career to teach you to be a 
A..^...................,........,..^.,..i good citizen. When we finish our 

education, we will find it necessary to accommodate 
ourselves to the laws and customs of government and 
society. Why should we not learn that valuable lesson 
in college? There will be regulations, rules, principles, 
and customs of conduct in college which we would wish 
changed or would rather have otherwise. But if we 
keep our eyes on fitting ourselves for real life by our 
college training, we will recognize in these seemingly 
unnecessary and troublesome rules and regulations the 
best sort of training for citizenship in the years to come. 
A college student's first duty is to submit gracefully 
and cheerfully to the regulations of the institution he 
attends, expecting therefrom to gain training, disci- 
pline, and habits of mind and conduct that will stand 
him in good stead in the work he is to do upon leaving 
college. The student who does this will enjoy going 
to college and will be safe. 

Morality should certainly be inculcated in a college. 
And institutions of learning are proud of their moral 
tone. The principles of moral conduct are the out 



44 The Making of Men 

growth of the experience of our race in matters of 
conduct and life. Morality changes. It has changed in 
our colleges. Hazing was once looked upon as pardon- 
able sport. To-day hazing is rightly regarded as a 
r ...................„................... relic of barbarism and a survival 

| J of savagery. No self-respecting 

I high moral [ student will indulge in it and no 

| TONE IS AN I ° » 

I essential in | decent college will tolerate it. 
? true | Why? The moral standard has 

? EDUCATION. t J ■ 

| t changed and to-day forbids any 

...... # ..^.......... # .....,., # ,.....„. M i S p 0r t w hich all who engage in it 

do not equally enjoy. That is always the test of 
Christian fun-making — that all who are in any way 
concerned in the fun should equally enjoy it. Tt is im- 
moral to swear and to drink liquor and to use "dope," 
and so a Christian college condemns these practices. 
It is immoral to gamble and to cheat on examinations, 
and so Christian educational institutions forbid these 
practices. Playing cards some regard as innocent 
amusement; others regard as sinful, because the prac- 
tice has led so many to ruin, and consider it especially 
disastrous for students because it robs them of precious 
hours that should be spent in other things, and equips 
them, without their knowing it, with the impulse and 
the skill of the gambler. 

A great many would be willing to stop here — with 
morality — but we dare not. We should not be satisfied 
as college men to have sound bodies, strong minds, beau- 
tiful social graces, upright moral character; no, great 
and glorious as these are, we cannot be satisfied with 
them. We must add to them spirituality, the crowning 
glory of man, the high privilege of the college to incul- 
cate and develop. I know that the Christian Bible has 



The Safety of Young People 45 

been expelled from the public schools in many of onr 

States and thrown in the dust heap in many of our state 

institutions of higher learning,* but I also know that 

....... , the great majority of the Amer- 

j | ican people wish that their chil- 

? education's | dren be educated in a spiritual 
I afo^isl f atmosphere. That is why we 
I spirituality. | build, equip, and maintain denom- 
| ] I inational colleges, that the things 

*..,....^..-.».„...... 9 ........ ft ..-i of the gp] r j t maj b e taught, insist- 
ed upon, inculcated, imbibed, practiced. A man may be 
moral and yet not be a Christian. He may be honest, 
truthful, sober, upright, just, and yet not be a Christian. 
A man may be all this and deny Christ and sneer at the 
Bible and disbelieve in God, his Creator and the Giver 
of every good gift. No man can be a Christian and deny 
Christ or the Bible or God. Christian education must 
therefore exalt Christ and strive that all who come un- 
der its influence should accept Him and live the life He 
would own and bless. And in so doing it will make its 
pupils safe, safe not only for this life but for eternity. 
Any education which attempts less than this may still 
be education, but it is not and cannot be called 
Christian. 



* The utter futility of higher education without the religious 
atmosphere is demonstrated by Germany's plight in the present great 
war. Germany provides a kind of religious instruction for children, 
but her universities are "free." Writing on this point, Rev. Charles 
F. Dole says : "The world is finding out that we cannot have a bare 
secular education by virtue of which leaders, as yet harsh and over- 
bearing, or unprincipled and self-indulgent, may be trained to run 
factories and govern great cities and steer a safe way amid the strife 
of nations. There is no education good enough to fit a man, however 
gifted, to lead and control his fellows, to order vast industries, to 
safeguard the welfare of states, which is not steadied by a supreme 
faith in the eternal goodness, and by confidence in a divine nature to 
be found, assumed, and trusted in the heart of every man who bears 
the human form." 



CHAPTEE FOUR 



COVETING THE BEST GIFTS 



1 Cor. 12: SI — "Covet earnestly the best gifts, and yet 
show I unto you a more excellent way." 



M 



'AN is a religions animal. This truth was noted 
and proclaimed by Aristotle thousands of years 
ago. No other animal seems to be possessed of 
this faculty. But no savage, be he never so low in the 
scale of civilization, be he never so degraded and igno- 
rant, has ever yet been found who did not give evidence 
.........,...........»...........„.*...... of possessing this distinguishing 

f J characteristic. All men every- 

f religion I wnere realize the existence of 
| natural, I superior beings and long to put 
* to man. J themselves j n favorable attitude 
I | toward them. Various systems of 

i...... M ..........„,..... 9 ...-.....,.,i reijgiQn have Deen brought for- 
ward to satisfy this longing in man. The theological 
systems of the Greeks and of the Romans said that 
religion was a matter of ritualistic conformance to the 
will of the gods declared through portents, prodigies, 
and signs. If a man did as the ritual said do, he was 
all right, no matter how unchanged his heart might be. 
The same thing is to a certain extent true of the 
formalism of the Old Testament, which culminated in 
the sect of the Pharisees. The religion of China, the 
worship of Confucius, forbade progress, because it made 



48 The Making of Men 

him a model, a mold after which every good Chinaman 
must model his life and to whom he must conform. All 
the pagan religions contained more or less prohibitions 
to do certain things. They put the emphasis on doing 
some act and had a tendency to make men conform to 
a model, to be more or less like each other, to subordi- 
nate individuality. 

There is one religion which puts the emphasis of 
conduct not on doing, but on being. That religion is 
Christianity. It is the crowning glory of Christianity 
.~......,.. e ...............^............ that it does not make men after a 

if pattern as a dressmaker makes a 
the emphasis f dress, that it does not run them 
OF 

I Christianity ! through the same mold as does the 

| on being. ! worker in clay or plaster of Paris, 

I | but that it makes them individ- 

i.....,..,........»...,..*.. 6 .........-A ualg In all other re iigions that 

have been offered to the world, there is a certain element 
of artificiality, of externality, of the addition of some- 
thing to the professor. This arises out of the fact that 
they put the emphasis of conformity to the religion on 
doing rather than on being. 

But Christianity, alone of the religions of the world, 
the one religion that is to conquer the world, sets up no 
? ...-,...........*..»........ 8 ......., 9 ... man-made standard and says, Do 

| I this; it sets up no such model and 

| the message I ****> Make your life an exact 
f of J reproduction of it. Its message is 

| ovn FAITH - { as follows : You are an individual 
I J and in you are the possibilities of 

i........e..,.. 9 ........„......,......,...i great things. Christ is to you an 

example. To Him you are not slavishly to conform, but 
by Him you are to be transformed by the renewing of 



Coveting the Best Gifts 49 

your spirit. If you would be a Christian, be a man, be 
the best man or woman you can be, and in thus being 
you will also be a Christian. If your life is the expres- 
sion of the best in you, then you are a Christian, and 
you are not a true Christian unless your life does 
express the very best in you. Christianity is life, the 
best life of which you are capable, and nothing which 
contributes to the excellence of life is unchristian. 
Christianity does not furnish you with a list of 
precepts for conduct. There is no such thing as being 
a Christian according to the standard of your neighbor. 
No amount of calculation will give you the rule which 
you can apply to all questions and incidents that may 
arise. Christianity is not mathematics nor the applica- 
tion of rules of conduct to the solution of perplexing 
problems: it is life. Whatever adds to the realization 
of life, to the betterment of it, is for you to follow as a 
Christian. In order for you to be a Christian, you must 
be a man, a true man or a true woman. 

This does not mean that you are to do nothing. 
Far from it. You are first to be and then to do. Nor 
can you do until you have become and are. This truth 
.-......—.....,..„............„.„.... comes to light more than once in 

I I the teachings of Christ. He it was 

who said that "by their fruits 
ye shall know them." He it was 
who asked if you would gather 
"grapes of thorns or figs of this- 
tles." He knew that being would 
necessarily result in doing and that doing to have moral 
and ethical value must rise out of being. Life, which 
Christianity is, is activity, not inactivity. When an 
organism that is alive ceases to move, it is dead. A true 



4 

f FRUIT-BEARING 

| NATURALLY 

! FOLLOWS. 



50 The Making of Men 

Christian is full of life and must therefore always be 
doing something. We are told that the Christ went 
about doing good, and so will all of those do who 
profess to be His disciples. Christianity is not and 
cannot be a life of contemplation, of separateness from 
the world. It is a life of ceaseless expression of the 
inward man in deeds of kindness and acts of love 
and of gradual, but continual, unfolding of the Golden 
Rule. The drone, the slothful man, cannot be a 
Christian, because his life does not issue in expression. 
A good tree bringeth forth good fruit. The unprofitable 
tree is hewn down and cast into the fire and consumed. 
The Christian who does not bring forth fruits is a poor 
sort of Christian. 

Christ is a person. Christianity is founded on a 
person and is a religion of persons. The central fact 
in the Christian religion is the personality of the 
«....,...«.....«,.......«.................. Savior. If Christ were an abstract 

t f principle, like goodness or happi- 

f and each man j ness > then He would have to be 

f is personally j approached through reason and 

| accountable, j worsh i ped through contempla- 

f | tion, but since He is a person, He 

i..*..^..^...................-......* mils t be approached by a person, 

as one individual approaches another, and is to be 
dealt with as we deal with ourselves. He is Himself 
a person and understands our longings as persons. He 
did not obliterate His personality in His teachings. 
Again and again does He say that "it hath been said 
of old" so and so, "but I say unto you." This is what 
made the people hang on His words, because He taught 
them as one having authority and not as the Scribes 
and Pharisees. And He taught them as one having, 



Coveting the Best Gifts 51 

authority simply because He kept His personality clear 
and distinct. Christ is a person and you are a person, 
and if you approach Him and become one of His 
followers, you, too, must be a person, must be an 
individual, must be yourself, with your talents, your 
personality, your deeds, and your life lived in accord 
with your own best instinct. 

Christ, who is your elder Brother, does not come and 
say to you that you must obey certain commands, wear 
a certain kind of clothing, look pious on Sunday 
•-•-^•-.-.....^•.^-^..^•....^ morning and whenever you see a 
| I preacher. He does not say that 

f christ»s J you must make Him a model in 
t mSb for J that ? ou must speak the language 
| each. I He spoke, eat the kind of food He 

I I ate, keep the hours He kept, or 

you that you have been endowed by the God and 
Father of us all with certain talents, powers, inclina- 
tions, ambitions, gifts, and that all of these are holy 
unto the Lord ; that if you would receive the reward of 
the faithful servant when your Lord cometh in His 
glory to judge the quick and the dead, you must develop 
these powers, gifts, ambitions, inclinations, and talents 
to the fullest extent; that His purpose in life for you 
is the full fruition of the powers in you and the bodying 
forth of your very best. 

Do you have the possibility in you of stalwart 
physical manhood? Then the message of Christ to you 
is that you are to husband that possibility and develop 
your physical manhood to the very highest extent. 
The deformation of the body practiced by many savage 
tribes that they may satisfy the gods in their suffering, 



52 The Making of Men 

has no place in the beneficent gospel of Christianity. 

The word for gospel in the original Greek from which 

the New Testament is translated means "good tidings." 

r ,............„....„. M ...o..^,.. ? It is not the will of Christ that any 

f I of His children should torture 

I physical t themselves. His greatest pleasure 

I manhood a £ is in their enjoyment and happi- 

| GOODGIFT - | ness ,. Again and again in the 

I | Scriptures of the new dispensation 

;.. ..............o.-..<, o.....-. ..i we are toId that our foodie are 

the temples of the living God, and we are forbidden to 
defile them in any way. Our bodies are sacred and he 
who maltreats his body is a sinner. 

If you are a follower of the meek and lowly Naza- 
rene, you will take all steps possible to you to have a 
strong, healthy, vigorous body. You will obey all the 
.......................................... la ws of health and avoid all the 

? | things that tend to wreck and 

t the body is f undermine the physical system. 
| god's I This is especially true of those 

| temple. i w k Q are flying themselves for 
| I larger things in life, by striving 

i..................-...... 8 .,. M ... 8 ...-i after education. Students often 

think that they are to prepare their recitations and 
make good grades. Tn fact, they are a little inclined to 
think that a strong, vigorous body is inconsistent with 
a well-trained mind. Herein they err. For you cannot 
have the strongest mind without having a physical 
basis for it, any more than you can have a forty-story 
building on a two-story foundation. Such a building 
will soon tumble down, and the full-orbed mind that 
has no health behind it is doomed to flitter for a 
moment and pass away. There is a vital relationship 



Coveting the Best Gifts 53 

between a man's mind and his body, and both are sacred. 
The student in college that studies every hour he is 
awake except the time taken in his meals and recitations 
is sinning against his body and is not a good Christian. 
The young man who will smoke cigarettes and drink 
alcoholic beverages and keep unwholesome hours is 
sinning against his body and is wounding the heart of 
Christ. All of us do not have the possibility of giant 
physical strength, but we have the possibility of taking 
care of what endowment of physical power we have been 
blessed with, and the message of Christ to us is, that we 
should make the most of our bodies, remembering that 
they are the temples of our God. 

But to those whom God has given the talent of 
exceptional physical strength Christianity brings this 
message. You are a child of God and He wants you 
to make the most of your gift of 
physical strength. Develop into 
the strongest man you can. If you 
can make of yourself the strongest 
man in the world, it is your duty 
to do so and you are not a full- 
orbed Christian unless you do 
attain this strength. Be the strongest, the best man 
physically that you can be, is the message of Chris- 
tianity to the man whose talents and inclinations lead 
him to long for physical development. Thus much on 
the side of being: be a man, a strong man. But 
Christianity does not stop here, Being must necessarily 
result in doing. What shall a man do with his 
strength? Shall he be a gladiator, a bully, a prize- 
fighter? Never! This would be a prostitution of his 
physical manhood and Christianity and Christians can 



f 

f CHRISTIANITY'S 

| MESSAGE TO 
• THE MAN OF 
POWER. 



54 The Making of Men 

have no part with any sort of prostitution. The strong 
man, if he be a Christian, will use his strength for the 
betterment of humanity. He will join a life-saving 
station or enlist in some occupation beneficent and 
beneficial to his fellow man and will thus use his 
strength for the upbuilding of the happiness of mankind 
and the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ. The 
best that the pagan world could do with exceptional 
physical strength was to pit it in deadly combat against 
itself. Gladiatorial shows and fights with wild beasts 
were the destination of men talented with Herculean 
physical strength in unchristian lands. The Christian 
of great physical strength will use it to help, not to 
hinder, to advance not to retard, to save not to destroy, 
his fellow man. 

Do you have desires, founded on endowed powers, 
to be a master of assemblies? Then the message of 
Christ, your Savior and mine, to you is to covet that 
..^„......................-..........^ gift, make the most of your powers 

t I and gifts and inclinations towards 

| I eloquence. It is a goodly gift, one 

eloquence J f t h e best gifts, and you should 

? A GOOD GIFT. \ ° ! * 

| | covet it and husband it and make 

f | the most of it. You cannot aim 

i........,...^..„......^.....„....„i t0Q high you should try to be a 

Cicero or a Demosthenes or a Webster or a Clay. Let 
your ambition be to sway those who come to listen to 
the words and sentiments that you utter. To be able 
to stand before your fellow men and to declare to them 
your sentiments and to convince them that you are 
right, that is the power of a king among men. Such a 
power is more potent and efficacious than the auto- 
cratic sovereignty vested in the Czar of Russia. Could 



Coveting the Best Gifts 55 

the Czar of Russia persuade his people that he is right, 
his government would be on a sounder basis than it is 
to-day. The world has always honored the orator and 
it always will. He is a master of men. The shrewd 
Caesar, eloquent orator that he was, knew the value of 
Cicero's eloquence to him and to his cause and sought 
to buy him. The persecutors of Saint Paul knew the 
value of eloquence and employed an orator Tertullian 
to accuse him, the platitudinity of whose phrases is very 
evident to all who have read the Acts of the Apostles. 
Be an orator; be a man of eloquence; covet earnestly 
the power to sway your fellow men, for it is one of the 
best gifts of God to man, says the Master to the man 
or the woman whose talents tend in that direction. 
Thus much for the being. 

But what of the doing? Shall the orator and the 
master of assemblies sell himself to an unworthy cause 
for money as did Tertullian when he accused Paul? 
? ^...........,..........„.........^. ? Shall he be a demagogue as were 

f ? those men of rare gifts and start- 

I the christian I lin g eloquence, Alcibiades at 
I use of I Athens, Tiberius and Gaius 

I ELOftUENCE ' | Gracchus at Rome? By no means. 

I I A great many lawyers hold to-day 

A.. 8 .. e .. e ........... 8 .. 8 ...„,..,........A ^^ ^ Q y are a _£ ijj3 er ty to accept 

aDy case and do all they can for their clients, irrespec- 
tive of the deserts of these same clients. They have a 
paltry opinion of the functions of the barristers' 
profession. If any of you become lawyers, I beg you 
not to accept a case unless you believe your client is in 
the right. Do not sell yourself for money. Treasure 
your eloquent tongue and your knowledge of the law 
higher than that. Nor will the Christian orator be a 



56 The Making op Men 

demagogue. He will consecrate his powers of eloquence 
to the service of his fellows and to the advancement of 
the Kingdom. He will be a preacher of righteousness. 
I do not mean that every eloquent man, that every 
orator who professes Christ, will become an ordained 
minister. But I do mean that every Christian orator 
will be a preacher of righteousness, of right-living, 
whether he be a lawyer, a platform lecturer, or a poli- 
tician. Whatever his profession, his tongue will ever 
and on all occasions ring clear and loud for that which 
is right and makes for human betterment. 

Do you have a desire and a talent to make money, 
to acquire wealth ? If so, the message of Christ to you 
is that you shall employ that talent to the best of your 
........................................... ability. Try to be as rich as a 

| £ Croesus or a Shylock or a Roths- 

f I child or a Rockefeller. There is no 

• money-making | disgrace in being rich. Some men 

| A RARE GIFT. f -° ° 

| | have the talent to make money and 

| J they are not full-orbed men unless 

4...................,......,............„i ^ e y become wealthy; it is the 

duty of some people to be wealthy. Wealthy men have 
a. distinct mission to perform in the world and can do 
an immense amount of good. If any of you have the 
talent to amass wealth, my advice to you is to amass it. 
The power to make money and to gain wealth is a rare 
power and is one of the best gifts to man. King 
Solomon was a very rich man, one of the wealthiest 
men of his day and generation. Many rich men have 
been the benefactors of their race. The world could ill 
do without them. Be the wealthiest man you can, 
provided you use honest methods in getting your wealth. 
If God has endowed you with the talent to make money, 



Coveting the Best Gifts 57 

to be wealthy, then if you are a servant worthy of your 
hire, you ought to be wealthy, and you have not 
fulfilled your purpose in life unless you develop that 
talent. 

But what shall I do with my money, do you ask? 
Use it to the glory of God and the upbuilding of His 
Kingdom. The Christian man who is rich will not take 
.......................................... advantage of his poorer brethren. 

f | He will help them in every way he 

• christ has t can - If y° u are r i cn > and are at 

| need op f the same time a Christian, vou will 

| WE ^™ Y ME *- I not hoard your wealth; you will 

| | use it to benefit your fellow man. 

i................. # .. .. (B ..... s ..<,.. e ...4 The christian who is rich in this 

world's goods, will use his wealth in such a way that 
he will lay up for himself treasures in the world to 
come, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and 
where thieves do not break through nor steal. I know 
a man who has the talent to make money and he makes 
it, but he does not hoard. I have heard him say that 
every dollar he makes beyond an amount sufficient to 
support his family and to provide for them after his 
death, he gives to the Church or to the destitute and 
needy. That is the spirit of Christ as to the disposition 
of wealth. This man says that he deserves no credit for 
his ability to make money, that the talent was given 
him by his Maker and that he ought to use it not for 
his own private ends, but for the advancement of the 
Kingdom of the Master in the earth. If you have the 
talent to make money, the exhortation of Scripture is 
to make it, and then to adopt the more excellent way 
and use it for the glory of God and the betterment of 
man. 



58 The Making of Men 

Do you feel that you are gifted as a writer? That 
you ought to become an author? Then, says Christ, by 
all means be an author ; that is the work appointed you 
.......................................... by the Lord and you ought to do it. 



| Bead the best books in all lan- 

I expression is I g ua g es - Read Homer and Cicero 
f a wonderful | and Demosthenes and Virgil. 
'• Bead Dante and Goethe and Spen- 
ser and Milton. Read Pope and 
Dryden and Addison and Carlyle. 
Read Hawthorne and De Quincey and Browning and' 
Tennyson. But above all read the Bible. It is an old- 
fashioned book ; but it is written in an absorbing style, 
and in it are found the principles that give dignity and 
weight and poise to life. Not only read these authors 
and their books, but imitate them as well. Strive 
with all the power that is in you to develop freshness 
and vigor of expression. Strive for virility and crisp- 
ness and force. Strive for beauty and rhythm and 
excellency of cadence. Be the most vigorous user of 
your mother tongue of your day and time if you can 
attain such perfection. God has given you the talent 
to be an author, the power to express your ideas in such 
manner that the reading of them shall be a pleasure to 
men and possibly bring them around to your way of 
thinking. If you are a child of God, it is your duty to 
develop this talent, or you will receive the curse of the 
unprofitable servant who hid his Lord's money in the 
earth. 

But this is not all. This is only half the message 
of Christ to you. For what purpose ought you to 
develop this power that is in you? To be yourself? 
That is true ; but it is not all the truth. You must go 



Coveting the Best Gifts 59 

farther than this and use this gift for the good of your 
fellow man and the coming of the Kingdom on the earth. 
You will not join the staff of a Yellow Journal. You 
.„....„......^.........„.....^..... will not write trashy novels. You 

I f will devote yourself to the por- 

! god needs j trayal of the great passions that 
writers^for t sur g e in tne breast of yourself and 
his kingdom. | of your fellows. You will give 

| them such excellence and elegance 
......................................a Qf gett j n g that alJ w]l(> rea( j w ju b e 

moved to act from noblest impulses and strive for 
highest aims both for themselves and for others. If you 
do not enter the realm of fiction, but choose that of 
the professional journalist, you will devote yourself to 
the great questions that confront men for solution and 
you will endeavor to help them to solve them in a 
manner and a way that will accord with the purpose of 
God in the universe. Your pen will never be found 
except on the side of right and of justice and of eternal 
truth. No man will be rich enough to buy you to 
advocate a thing you do not conscientiously believe to 
be right. Yes, be a great author, but be at the same 
time a child of God and a vigilant and unrelenting 
preacher of righteousness. 

Would you be a scholar? Does your mind long for 
knowledge? Does your talent lie 
in the line of accurate and pains- 
taking scholarship ? Then it is your 
duty to be a scholar. Go to college 
and graduate. Go to the univer- 
sity and pursue your specialty. 
Be an authority in your line. 
Do not cease to search for truth. The scholar with all 



?-•• 


•..*..«. 


• 

i 


1 


SCHOLARSHIP 


! 


t 


A 


WORTHY 


1 




AIM. 


i 








• 

: 
• 


•■••>.«..•..• 


'•••.•"•••••^••••••"•.••••i 



60 The Making of Men 

the ridicule that is heaped upon him by the so-called 
practical folk, with the smell of antiquity about him 
and the dust of ancient volumes adhering to him, has 
yet a distinct mission in the world. The story of human 
progress would be a short one, if the part contributed 
by the scholars were subtracted. It is no disgrace to 
be a scholar. If you have the instinct of a scholar and 
are talented in that direction I do not know a more 
worthy field in which you may labor and live out your 
days. 

But what shall you do with your scholarship? Use 
it for the advancement of truth. Give yourself to the 
instruction of those who do not know as much as you 
,^..e...„..^...................-.. do > but who would be wonderfully 

I I helped in life if you were to impart 

t dedicate your | to them some of the light you 
• scholarship \ possess in occult and hidden 

! TO CHRIST. f Jjf T „ . , , , 

? ? matters. Infuse into your scholar- 

| % ship the spirit of Christianity and 



by means of it make life sweeter 
and the lot of humanity more delightful. If Pythagoras 
had kept secret his discovery of the fact that the 
hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle can be found by 
extracting the square root of the sum of the squares 
on the other two sides, if Euclid had never published 
his geometry, if Franklin had kept the result of his kite 
experiment a secret, if Newton had never divulged his 
researches, if Bell and Morse and Marconi and Fulton 
and Harvey and Edison had not enriched the world by 
making known their discoveries and inventions, life 
had been a long way less delightful than it is to-day 
and the sum total of human happiness much less. 
Scholars are the benefactors of their race. Be a scholar 



«.. 9 .. s ..«.. a ..«..«..e..»..«.. s ..a..«. 



Coveting the Best Gifts 61 

if you are inclined that way. Scholarship is one of the 
best gifts. Covet it; then use it not for selfish ends, not 
to take advantage of the ignorance of your less 
fortunate fellows, but use it to better mankind, to help 
on the world, to do good, not evil, to make existence 
more heavenly and life more Christlike. 

Would you like to be a minister of the gospel ? Has 
God given you a talent to save others? Has He called 
you to be a man who by the foolishness of preaching is 
.......................................... to save the world from sin ? Then 

J | happy are you. Yes ; by all means 

• the gospel • answer the call. By all means be 
f ministry f a minister of the gospel. It is the 
j THE BEST GIFT * | noblest work in all the world. It 
| will not bring you great wealth, 
* but will bring you the grateful 
appreciation and the devoted love of those to whom 
you minister. Never was the demand for a consecrated 
ministry greater than now. If you feel the spirit of 
God working within you and calling you to preach the 
gospel, I beseech you to answer that call and do all you 
can to spread the Kingdom on the earth. Do not aim 
to be a great preacher, but aim to be a fruitful one. 
Aim to serve your fellow man and to deserve the 
approval of your Master. Preaching is the best gift of 
God to man. If you have that talent and do not 
develop it, you are of all men falling far short of doing 
your duty. Covet this gift. Labor to improve it, and 
then use it as becomes a servant of the living God. 

Whatever your inward inclinations, in your best 
moments, lead you to do, whether it be to have a strong 
body, to amass money, to be a master of assemblies, to 
be an author, to be a scholar, to preach the gospel, 



62 The Making of Men 

whether it be to shovel coal, or to follow the plow, or to 
manage a home, or to push a saw, whatever God may 
lead you to believe that you ought to do, that do with 
t „„»„n,n„, M ,„„,:„.„ 1 ,n.,r t ali jour might and in so doing you 
f : will merit His approval. But 

! the more • remember that while you are a 
? excellent | person and are to develop yourself 
| | to the very highest extent, to be 

I I what your powers tell you you 

i..............*................*.......* OU gj 1 ^ ^ De? remember that, while 

this is so, you are also to complete your life by doing, 
by doing the things your hands find to do, that you are 
to consecrate all the powers you have and all the 
attainments you may acquire, and all the successes you 
may achieve to the glory of God and the good of His 
Kingdom. The message of Christ to you is to covet 
earnestly the best gifts, labor zealously for the attain- 
ment of the best things to which your individuality 
would lead you. Be yourself, be a man, be a woman, 
be an individual, be a person. But the pagan world 
also would tell you that. You cannot stop there, if you 
would be a Christian. Saint Paul not only exhorts us 
to covet earnestly the best gifts, but he also adds this, 
"and yet show I unto you a more excellent way." And 
what is that more excellent way? It is to. consecrate 
all your powers and all your attainments and all your 
successes to the advancement of the Kingdom of God 
and the betterment of your fellow men. This is the 
message of the gospel, this is the exhortation of Paul, 
this is the voice of Christ to vou. 



CHAPTER FIVE 



THE SOUL'S MOST SERIOUS QUESTION 



Psalm 15: 1 — "Lord, who shall abide in Thy taber 
naclef Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? 



I 

| THE 



UNIVERSAL, 



EVERY man and every woman worthy the name has 
asked himself or herself this question. Every 
boy and every girl who has reached the years of 
accountability and across whose mind the purpose of 
life has left the trail of its impress, has met this 
absorbing question face to face. It is the universal 
........................................... question of the human race, 

"Lord, who shall abide in Thy 
tabernacle? Who shall dwell in 
Thy holy hill?" The ignorant 
question. J gavage> clad in the leaveg of the 

| 1 forest and the skins of wild 

i.........................................* an i m als, with no shelter save the 

grotto or the friendly cave, in moments of deepest yearn- 
ing, has proposed this question to himself and, in its 
winding labyrinth, has whiled away many a swift-footed 
hour. The Chinaman, with the veil of the past drawn 
tightly over his spiritual eyes, has yet in moments of 
holy exaltation ceased his worship of ancestors, bid 
defiance to his Confucianism, and in the full vigor of 
his manhood and the effulgence of his waking hours, 
proposed to his soul this question of questions. The 
youth with length of days before him and with the flush 



64 The Making op Men 

and bloom and vigor of stalwart manhood luring him 
on, has yet in some quiet, holy hour drawn in the 
reigns of his on-rushing steed, and in solemn earnest- 
ness pondered this entrancing theme in his heart of 
hearts. The proud captain of industry, with the wheels 
of a hundred factories and the horny hands of a 
myriad of human souls constantly doing his bidding, 
the type of the self-sufficient man of the modern world 
of finance, has yet at sundry times and on divers 
occasions deemed the pondering of this question of far 
greater importance than the future of the cotton 
market and the quotations of the various classes of 
stocks and bonds. High and low, great and small, 
prince and pauper, men of low estate and men of high 
estate, have each and all of them earnestly considered, 
prayerfully pondered this great question, upon whose 
solution turns the weal or woe of each individual soul. 
This question grows out of man's essential nature, 
which is religious. The most degraded savage, the most 
cultured scholar, the most pious and consecrated saint, 
.......................................... the most reprobate sinner who 

I | enjoys God's sunlight and air, all 

I all men have I of tnem a S ree in being essentially 
I religious I religious animals. Aristotle, 
| beliefs. i greatest thinker of a race of think- 
| } ers, saw this wonderful trait in 

♦..•....^......-........................i h uman na ture and proclaimed it 

as one of the fundamentals of his system of ethics. No 
race of humans has yet been discovered, be they never 
so ignorant and degraded, who have not had some idea 
of God and some practices of religion. A study of all 
the primitive races of the world which are known to 
us by their descendents on the earth or through the 



The Soui/s Most Serious Question 65 

researches of archaeologists, proves the essential and 
actual oneness of the human family on this great theme. 
Even the mongrel population of the desert region of 
Australia, and the Bushmen of South Africa, and the 
island and cliff-dwellers of Lower California, are not 
without indications of a belief in superior beings and a 
system of theology, which, crude though it is, is yet 
evidence of the religious nature of man. 

There is a feeling deep-seated in human nature that 
man is not self-sufficient, that he is not monarch of all 
he surveys, though an all-wise Creator has made him a 

. __ „ „ little lower than the angels. There 

| f are powers and forces in nature 

| human ? that he does not and cannot under- 

I ^bceJs^ate? I stand > and so he presupposes a 
| religion. | God. There are facts in human 

| | experience which he cannot 

i.. 8 ..... a ...^..^.................-i explain other than by the postula- 

tion of a hereafter and a future life and so he postulates 
them. To primitive man the future life was so real 
that property at its origin was eternal. Can you 
conceive of a man ordering that, when he should be 
dead, his slaves and wife and all his property should 
be buried with him, unless he and they believed in the 
hereafter 'and believed in it even more than they 
believed in this present life? To Socrates death was 
nothing but the mental abstraction and contemplation 
of the body and soul as separate, and on the very day 
on which he drank the fatal hemlock, he told the unjust 
judges that he was soon to die, but that he counted his 
lot as superior to theirs. To Cato, the great Eoman 
censor, this life was simply a harbor on the great 
voyage of eternal existence. To Goethe, the great poet 



66 The Making of Men 

of the Germanic race, life was contained in the phrase, 
"out of eternity into eternity." To the Christ, the 
Savior of the world, life was a vineyard in which there 
was the Father's work to do, and the hereafter was a 
house of mansions. Grant that this life is not all of 
life. Grant that there is a hereafter, and in the minds 
of most men who think there can be no doubt of this 
proposition, and the question of the Psalmist becomes 
a burning one, and on its answer will turn the issues 
of time and eternity. "Lord, who shall abide in Thy 
tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill?" 

Not only is this a universal question, founded on 
man's essentially religious nature, but it is the eclipsing 
question of life — not only the universal question, but 
.-.-..^».».^.^^„.-. M .„^.,... the one question of existence. The 
f I savage spends most of his time 

religion | studying it. In the morning as he 

I IFE'S MOST 
| ENTRANCING I g 0eS 0Ut t(D hUIlt 0I> HSh ' he st °°P S 

| theme. | down to pick up every stone of 

I | peculiar shape, not because he 

4^..~^..~.-^...-#^..~^.-a De ij eves that there is any virtue in 

a stone per se, but because spirits are supposed to 
inhabit all objects of peculiar shape. He listens to the 
wind and watches the stars and worships the so-called 
idols, not because they are to him gods, but because they 
are material representations of great spiritual forces. 
To the savage the immanence of God, of which we hear 
so much to-day and which we are told is a major 
achievement of modern thought, is the most real thing 
in the world. To the answer of this question the 
Hebrew people devoted one-twelfth of their population, 
one-tenth and more of all their earnings, and one- 
seventh of their time, regularly, while there were 



The Soui/s Most Serious Question 67 

great religious celebrations in which all the people 
participated at frequent intervals during the year. 
The greatest minds and best trained intellects of all 
times and of all lands and kindreds and tongues have 
been devoted to the solution of this question. 

But it must not be forgotten that this is a personal 
question and that it must be solved by every one individ- 
ually. With some it is the business of a life, and with 
r ....................................... ? all it ought to be. But in a great 

f | many lives, and the number of 

I and it is I these is far too numerous, this 
I intensely I great question is crowded into the 
J personal. I background> The statesman 

| | Cicero thought it was inferior in 

4..,...-.„.„......^........„...,...-i i m p 0r tance to the preservation of 

the republic, but the man Cicero, when he had seen his 
fond dream of the restored republic shattered to the 
four winds and when family happiness had deserted 
him, a gray-haired old man of sixty winters, consoled 
his remaining days by thinking on the great moral 
issues of life, and, according to the light he had, solved 
them in a most philosophical manner. We count the 
downfall of the Roman Republic and the loss of Cicero's 
family happiness as small as against his wonderful 
contributions to moral science among the Romans. In 
the final casting of accounts Cicero will not be remem- 
bered for his consulship and his great labors in behalf 
of the republic, but for the wonderful insight into moral 
matters which is to be found on every page of his 
De Finibus, his Tusculanae Disputationes, his De 
Senectute, his De Amicitia, and his other moral works. 
Mr. John D. Rockefeller in his early days decided 
that the serious business of life for him was the 



68 The Making op Men 

amassing of wealth. The result is that he is the richest 
man in the world. But it is different with Mr. Rocke- 
feller now. Already has he begun to give of his millions 
... e ...^..,.. ft ..... e ...........-....... ? to the cause of education and the 

I | spread of the gospel. He knows 

life's • that soon the summons will come 

? INTEREST , . i , „ „ T n 

I often shifts f to him to appear before the Judge 
to the • f a u ^- ne ear th and he is doing his 

? RELIGIOUS. ? , ° 

| | best to get ready to answer that 

A..^...................................i summ ons, — it is no longer the 

making of money with him, but the judicious use of 
money that in his case at least the metaphor of the rich 
man and the oamel may not prove true. We have in 
the case of Mr. Carnegie another illustration of the 
same shift of the real business of life. While he was 
organizing the great steel corporation, the thing in life 
for him was the making of money. To-day, an old man 
with the weight of years bearing down heavily upon 
him, he proclaims to the world the strange doctrine that 
it is a disgrace to die rich, a doctrine which fifty years 
ago he would have dismissed as the veriest dream of an 
over-strained imagination. With him to-day it is not 
dollars, but good deeds; not the organization of finan- 
cial enterprises, but the attainment of eternal life, and 
while we many not approve his working-out of his plan, 
yet we cannot deny him credit for a beautiful thought. 
The rich young ruler, puffed up by his position as ruler 
and by his wealth, was unwilling to sell all that he had 
and give it to the poor and to become a follower of the 
humble Nazarene, whose earthly life was spent in the 
solution of this problem. And yet we may be sure that, 
if this young ruler lived to ripe old age and saw the 
frailty of human power and the nothingness of material 



The Soui/s Most Serious Question 69 

wealth when contrasted with the riches of the spiritual 
realm, we may be sure, I say, that his mind frequently 
rested upon that interview and that he regretted his 
unwise decision. 

Solomon thought that the one desirable thing in this 
life was wisdom. He had it ; his wisdom was the marvel 
not only of his own day, but of all later generations as 
? ........,......„........................ ? well. The world has never since 

I | seen his equal in wisdom. In 

? this I addition to his wisdom, he was 

? UNIVERSAL | , , , . 

i question i the great and honored sovereign of 
? must be ? a g r eat people in the best era of 

| ANSWERED. ! . . . ., . . 

4 i their national existence, and his 

A ..................„..................e„i wea jth W as sufficient to supply 

him with all the luxuries of the oriental life. It does 
seem that, humanly speaking, he ought to have been 
supremely happy. But after long years of ceaseless 
searching after happiness, when the sunset of life was 
reddening the western horizon of his earthly pilgrimage, 
he said these memorable words: "Let us hear the 
conclusion of the whole matter, fear God and keep His 
commandments; for this is the whole duty of man." 
Wonderful words these to come from the wisest man 
the ages have produced, and yet the words are as true 
as the eternal verities themselves. To you, college men 
and women, with life's possibilities stretched out before 
you and with daily routine of college tasks constantly 
surrounding you on every hand, the serious business of 
life no doubt seems to be the making of grades, success 
on the athletic field, or victory in a public forensic con- 
test. Later in life these things will be forgotten. Ten 
years from now you will forget which side was victori- 
ous in the games of baseball between the universities 



70 The Making of Men 

of Virginia and North Carolina. Twenty-five years 
from now you will have forgotten what grade you made 
in mathematics or English or Greek. What you will 
remember and treasure as priceless possessions and 
richest legacies will be the hours you spent in the 
Sunday-school, the Young Men's Christian Association, 
the Christian Endeavor, the Church, and other religious 
organizations with which you may have been so fortu- 
nate as to ally yourself. And if you formed the 
habit of daily Bible reading at college you will count 
that as one of the sweetest and most helpful acquisitions 
of your whole life's career. It may be that after you 
leave college and enter upon real life, the siren of ambi- 
tion may lure you to prefer business or pleasure or 
official position to the solution of this burning question 
of human life, but sooner or later, and the sooner the 
better for you and your soul's welfare, this great 
problem will present itself to you for solution as it 
presented itself to the Psalmist and has presented itself 
to every one who has breathed the breath of life, and 
you must solve it. Those who meet and answer properly 
this eternal issue in the splendid days of youth are ex- 
ceedingly fortunate, blest! It is well for all of us to 
"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth." 
But why ? Because the Bible commands it ? No. The 
Bible commands it because it is necessary. But why? 
Because you are not really and truly prepared to live 
until you have met and properly answered this great 
issue of life. You may stay on the earth, that is to say, 
you may exist, but you will never fulfill the purpose 
your Creator had in your creation unless you meet and 
solve this problem of the soul. It is true that many men 
much in the public eye are not models after which to 



The Soui/s Most Serious Question 71 

pattern your career. It is also true that a great many 
such people have attained to success in a worldly sense 
of the word, but they are not fit examples for the young 
...... „ man or woman who would live the 

f complete life to pattern his or her 

t HAPPY THEY | life aliter - 1 take ** tliat College 

I who answer £ men are anxious to live the 

IT I1V YOUTH 

I | complete life, or else why are they 

f | at college? It is not the man who 

A.....^.^....^.,.........„... e „... e -i succeeds the most who has best 

used the boon of life. There are some things better 
than success. The man who amasses a fortune by mis- 
using the living of widows and orphans is just as much 
a success as the man who to-day occupies the President's 
chair and directs the destinies of the greatest nation of 
the world. Both have accomplished their ambitions, 
both have succeeded. On the other hand Christ was a 
miserable failure, as the world judges success, and so 
was Socrates, and so were all the martyrs, whose blood 
has proven to be the seed of the Church. True success, 
not the momentary applause or volatile approval of 
the world, is what college men, ambitious as they are to 
live the lives that shall yield the largest returns to 
themselves and their fellow men, are eager to attain. 
The only way to attain such true success is to answer 
this question in your youth, when the evil days are not 
and the years draw not nigh in which you shall say 
that you take no interest in your soul's welfare; for 
only when you have settled this great moral issue are 
you ready to enter upon life's highway, assured of 
yourself and confident of ultimate victory. 

Mr. Orison Swett Marden, in one of his books, tells 
the story of a business man of large interests, whose 



72 The Making of Men 

books were balanced each night so that were he to die 
before the next morning, his administrators could at a 
glance ascertain his wealth and settle his estate without 
.„....-....„.„....„.— ....„.....^ accounting or litigation. This 
f f may not be good business, though 

? keep the I if it were practiced there would be 
I so ™l£™°™ T J fewer failures in the financial 
f balanced. | world ; it is good religion and also 
| | the highest type of moral common- 

i-^...^..........^.^. ...... j sense Tn i s j s w i ia t the Master 

meant, when He said, "Watch and pray." The man 
who lives the complete life in Christ Jesus has his soul's 
account book so arranged that were he to die at any 
minute, his friends would be put to no trouble to find 
the exact condition of his soul's welfare. It is only the 
man of this character who is truly prepared to live the 
real life, to accomplish the most good in the world. 

Did you ever think why we felt so little the shock 
of the assassination of President McKinley? It was 
because he was prepared to die, and therefore prepared 
r ....,.....................„...„...... ? to live. His policies were carried 

| f on by his successor in office be- 

f : cause of the deep foundations he 

that is f laid f 0r t hem. And when the 

| TRULY TO LIVE. J 

| | death summons came, it found him 

| | ready to answer because he was 

i............„...........................A alsQ ready tQ liye A beaut iful 

illustration of this same great truth is contained in 
the career of President Harper of the University of 
Chicago. In the forty-nine years allotted to him, he 
accomplished more than the majority of geniuses can 
accomplish in a full threescore and ten. When the 
final hour came, it found him still at work directing 



The Soul's Most Serious Question 73 

the affairs of the vigorous institution his fertile brain 
had brought into existence. He died, but not a recita- 
tion ceased in all that great university, nor did a single 
change occur in any of the routine work of the 
institution. Every thing went on as before. Except in 
his home, where his lifeless form lay, there was no sign 
of death. He had been prepared to die, and only by 
being prepared to die was he prepared to live. The 
secret of the success of George Washington and Stone- 
wall Jackson was that they were prepared to die. The 
stories of the victories of these two warriors are 
entrancing as we read them, but they are easily 
explicable, when we recall the records of their praying 
before entering into battle. Being prepared to die, 
they were prepared to fight their country's battles and 
if need be to sacrifice their lives on the altar. It is to 
such men as these, men who met and answered this 
great question in their youth, men who, being prepared 
to die, were all the more prepared to live; it is to such 
men as these that I cite you as examples worthy of your 
emulation. Place the example of these men before you 
and 

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan that moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams." 

Living such a life you shall enjoy the peace of God, 
which passeth all understanding, that peace in the 
security of which the trials and difficulties and burdens 



74 The Making of Men 

of life will take unto themselves a new meaning, that 
peace in the enjoyment of which you will be perfectly 
......................................... happy whether you be on a sinking 

• and to • sn *P * n * ne midst of the Atlantic 

| have the f or seated comfortably by a cozy 

| PE piS E TH AT | fire in the old homestead. But 
| under- J remember that you can have this 

| standing. i p eace on jy on one condition, that 



••••••••.••«•• 



you meet and solve this question 
which the Psalmist proposed to himself, ''Lord, who 
shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy 
holy hill?" If you meet and solve this question you 
shall have the peace of God in your life, and through 
the help of the spirit of God you shall go forth a 
pleasure to yourself and benediction to your companions 
along life's highway. The Savior is ready and willing 
and anxious to help you answer this great and serious 
issue of life. He has said, "Come unto Me, all ye that 
labor and are heavy laden and T will give you rest." 
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock ; if any man will 
open unto Me, I will come in and sup with him and he 
with Me." "Whosoever will, let him come and partake 
of the water of life freely." 

And in another place it is said, the plan of salvation 
r ...................„................... is so simple "that a wayfaring man 

| | though a fool need not err 

| christ is J therein." The way to attain salva- 
t A gtve th^s° I tion is to an swer this question of 
I peace. f the Psalmist under the guidance 

£ I of the Spirit and by the help 

;..-.-................................-i of the gavior> In fact? t]ie 

reason why Christ came into the world was to help His 
people to answer correctly this question ; for we are told 



The Soul's Most Serious Question 75 

in the Sacred Writ that "God so loved the world that 
He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever should 
believe on Him should not perish, but should have 
eternal life." And the blessed Christ Himself has told 
us with words of deepest assurance, "My peace I leave 
with you : My peace I give unto you — " and the Apostle 
assures us that this peace of God, which can be ours 
for the asking, has been the one thing about the Chris- 
tian religion that has made it such a joy to the believer 
and such a weapon against the scoffer and the atheist. 

This peace of God will make the world over again 
for you. With this peace in your soul, you will be in 
the world, but not of the world. With this blessed 
.-........^.„..., M ..^. M .....^. peace of God in your soul, there 

| f will come to pass in your heart the 

I and the joy I Kingdom of the Father and the 
? of it— how I Son. When this peace shall have 
| THRI]L]LING! f entered into your heart and have 
J J become a vital part of your being, 

4...........................„..........„a ^ en there will have dawned a new 

and glorious day in your life — a day for which the 
greatest and wisest and best have ever longed as "the 
one far-off divine event, to which the whole creation 
moves," but a day which can come to the world only 
through the individual soul, aflame with the love of God 
because of the answering of this great question. Believe 
me, the golden age is neither in the dead and musty past, 
nor in the glittering visionary future, but in the now 
and the present for those who have answered the ques- 
tion the Psalmist propounded to himself in the words 
of the text, — for those who are hid with Christ in God. 



CHAPTER SIX 



STRIVING FOR THE MASTERY 



1 Cor. 9:25 — "Every one that striveth for the 
mastery is temperate in all things." 



THERE is a metaphor involved in the text, the 
comparison of the Christian life to the race- 
course, and the appropriateness of the compar- 
ison is evident to all who think for a moment what the 
athletic contests of the ancient stadium involved. 
There were four great series of games celebrated among 
? ........................................ ? the Greeks: the Olympian, the 

| f Pythian, the Isthmian, and the 

I | Nemean. Paul evidently had in 

4 the metaphor | m i n( j t he Isthmian games, since he 

? INVOLVED. | .,. , ° „ \ , . 

| | was writing to the Corinthians, 

| I near whose city these games were 

a..................................*.....* ce i e |3 ra ted in honor of Poseidon or 

Palsemon. It is not necessary to explain the great store 
the Greeks set by physical training in their system of 
education, — they really regarded it as half of education. 
Nor is it necessary to describe in detail the rigorous 
training all who entered their races were subjected to. 
"Temperate in all things" is the phrase that exactly 
fits the conditions imposed. At the time that St. Paul 
wrote, the discipline began ten months before the time 
for the contest to take place and was so severe that 
only professional athletes could enter the lists. Even 



78 The Making of Men 

their diet was regulated, as in the case of athletes of 
many American colleges to-day. Their diet is thus 
described by Epictetus: "Thou must be orderly, living 
on spare food : abstain from confections : make a point 
of exercising at the appointed time, in heat and in 
cold; nor drink cold water or wine at hazard: — in a 
word, give thyself up to thy training-master as to a 
physician, and then enter the contest." Nor is it 
necessary to relate at length the honors that came to the 
victor, who had his name sung from one end of the 
world to the other in the great national odes, the wall of 
whose native city was torn down for him to enter as he 
returned home, and whose name was enrolled forever 
in the hall of fame of his country. Manifestly all who 
strove for the mastery, for victory, in such a contest 
had to be temperate in all things. 

This race to which Paul refers is typical of the race 

in which we are all engaged, the race of life, the 

realization of our aims, the making the most out of the 

time allotted us. I accept it that 

we, too, as the ancient contestants 

i of the race course, are striving for 

I • mastery I the mastery, the mastery of some- 

| raiVERSAL « | thing. I accept it as a universal 

I I principle in human nature that all 

A......».„....„.........^..^.....,i men j Qn g f Qr guccegs ^t man> ^ 

he bond or free, be he high or low, be he Greek or 
barbarian, be he veriest saint or foulest sinner, desires 
failure. Failure means incompetency, slavery, death, 
dissolution, decay. Success means mastery, life, real, 
earnest, abounding life. Where is the man, the woman, 
who does not love life and shun death; who does not 
strive for the masterv, for success, who does not bend 



Striving for the Mastery 79 

every effort of his being to the avoiding of slavery, of 
incompetency, of failure? To all such, to all who, 
charmed by a siren singer, the melody of whose music 
they are powerless fo resist, push on to self-realization ; 
to all, who filled with noble aims and lofty aspirations, 
strive for the mastery of themselves and their circum- 
stances, for honorable victory and enduring triumph, St. 
Paul says, "Be temperate in all things." 

The intense individualism of the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries is losing caste among us. Men are 
no longer allowed to do just as they please in a great 
.„................................*...... many tilings. We yet honor the 

I | individual and respect his rights 

f ™st Sive^ 13 I and we are far from ^siring to 
I intSiper- • see a11 men developed according to 
| atelt. I a given pattern or run through the 

| | same mold. America will never 

^.^........„.-..........«.»-.~* become China, but we are con- 
scious now that too much individualism does incalcu- 
lable injury to many of the units of society and that 
it is better to abridge the individual's liberties at 
certain points for the welfare of the whole people. 
Already Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy, which 
is founded on an individualism so eccentric that, to be 
consistent, its author had to oppose free schools and 
free libraries, has ceased to exert the spell over men's 
minds it once did and to give shape and form to man- 
kind's opinions as it did twenty-five years ago. We 
have realized that individualism, like socialism, like 
Confucianism, may be and frequently is intemperate. 
And no system of government polity can long hope to 
prosper that is founded on a basis of intemperance. 



80 The Making of Men 

Consequently we hear of the New Federalism, of 
the Humanitarian Movement, of the Parliament of Man, 
of Church Federation, and of measures almost without 
.......................................... number looking to the abridgment 

f | of individual, intemperate rights 

t a new I * n ^ ne interest of the whole people. 

f ferment in f This protest against intemperance 

i MODERN LIFE. £ < j • . t • . 

| | to-da t y is not only winning victor- 

f I ies for prohibition in the South 

i.. e .....,................^......^.„A and the West? but it is cal ii ng 

great corporations before the tribunals of justice to 
answer for their intemperate violations of the law; it 
is developing new principles for the granting of fran- 
chises; it is wresting the public lands from those who 
have possessed them illegally; it is preserving our 
forests from wholesale destruction ; it is rescuing the 
Niagara Falls from the hands of predatory financiers 
and saving it as one of the most wonderful cataracts 
of nature's workmanship; it is waging a war on 
unnecessary noise and dirt and filth in cities and on 
advertisements along the highways of public travel; 
it is doing to the death the patent medicine evil ; it is 
everywhere pleading for the "Beautiful America." We 
are tired of intemperance, of excessive individualism, as 
a people in all the avenues of our activities, and we 
are asserting ourselves ; we are deciding to be temperate 
in all things. Therefore the sun of our country's glory 
is far from its meridian; it is only yet in its early 
morning hours. Great as our country is, it is destined 
in the coming days to become greater still. Our 
country, blest of God with wondrous resources, with a 
bound forging to a position of leadership among the na- 
tions, is to lead them into larger fields still and to fulfill 



Striving for the Mastery 81 

a nobler mission to the world. And this because the 
spirit of temperance, which is the fundamental condi- 
tion of mastery, is abroad in the land, permeating the 
texture of our public life, affecting and molding the 
thought of our people, shaping and dictating and deter-' 
mining the acts of our legislative, executive, and judicial 
officials. It would seem as if St. Paul had twentieth 
century America in his mind as he wrote this word : at 
any rate it is evident that present-day America has 
imbibed the spirit of his utterance and is putting it into 
practical operation. 

But there is a message in this text for us as 
individuals; "Every one that striveth for the mastery 
is temperate in all things." And especially is this 
? ...................................... e .. ? message appropriate to college 

f I students, — to the men and women 

{ college life I who > in the natural course of 
| imposes f events, are to furnish leadership in 
| burdens. I ^ ie wor j ( j> g wor k ? upon whose 

I | shoulders are to rest the weight 

i.........................................* an( j ^^ e care an( j ^e anxiety for 

the preservation and the exaltation of all the fabric of 
our social, political, industrial, intellectual, and relig- 
ious life. If ever men and women needed to ponder these 
words of the great apostle, surely it is college students. 
They ought to become masters in their chosen realms 
of activity, — it is but natural that they should. They 
enjoy advantages beyond the great mass of their 
fellows, who look to them for leadership, capable 
leadership. Will they be able to furnish it? That 
depends on whether they are temperate in all things. 

A great many college men and women no doubt 
look upon their college days as a preparation for life; 



82 The Making of Men 

and they are, — but they are also life and the same 
conditions govern the attainment of mastery in college 
life that obtain in the so-called real life. We must not 
........................................... suppose that college days are days 

f I only of preparation for whatever 

I college days I ** ne °^ activity we have adopted 
| are real. f as our sphere of endeavor; we are 

; LIFE, TOO. i , , ,, xi 

I I to regard them as a part and 

| | parcel of the life we are to lead 

i...,.......................-.-.........* a ff er graduation. There is and 

can be no divorcement between college life and every- 
day life, because college life is every-day life plus the 
idea of special preparation and training. Let no college 
student even for a moment suppose that he can be 
intemperate in college and then become suddenly 
temperate on leaving college. Many men of brilliant 
promise, many women of large hope, have made fatal 
mistakes here, — mistakes from which they were never 
able after to recover. 

Many college students look upon the four years of 
college life as an arena for intellectual development; 
and they are, — but this is not the only side of college 
...„.-.„..........„...^....^...... life nor the only purpose of 



| ! colleges. Those who have this idea 

• books only a * an( * are ^temperate in their pur- 
| part of | suit of it spend their whole time 
I college WFE - | on text-books. They even study on 
| | Sunday and so violate the fourth 

*.........................................* comman( j m ent. They do not fre- 
quent the college reading room and library ; they attend 
religious and other public exercises in a listless way 
and are glad when they are over, feeling that they have 
lost just so much time from their books simply because 



Striving for the Mastery 83 

they have not lost it. Their literary society work is of a 
poor order ; they fail to take sufficient physical exercise ; 
they neglect the social intercourse of their fellows ; they 
are continually grinding away at the mill of text-book 
knowledge. They are book- worms. Whoever knew a 
worm of any sort to do anything worth while? They 
are intemperate in their study. They need to read this 
ninth chapter of First Corinthians; they need to 
practice its precepts, to inculcate its principles into 
their life. They need to give up Sunday study, to take 
physical exercise, to enter into the spirit of religious, 
literary, and other public services, to become members 
of the college community as well as to be in it. 

Then there are others who are in college for what 
they designate a good time — which phrase is a snare 
and a delusion — for their good time is from the start a 
»-.+-„—.«.+-.„..+.+„:.:.. bad one and becomes continually 
f f worse. They do not study system- 

I beware of I atically, but cram for tests and 
| the so-called f examinations. They always have 
j GOOD TIME * J time for visitors; they are them- 
| I selves frequent visitors. They are 

i-...^^.-*..-,-....-......* perhaps especially interested in 

bodily exercise, — they desire to make a reputation as 
athletes, famed for strong physical manhood, of iron 
muscles, of steel nerves and sinews. Or perhaps they 
are too indolent for that even. They simply while away 
their time in gaity and frivolity and dullard inanity. 
They, too, are intemperate. They need to face about, to 
adopt a different course, otherwise the college cannot 
do much for them. I have not a word to say against 
athletics — I believe in athletics — I believe the man or 
woman in college who fails to take proper physical 



Si The Making op Men 

exercise will one day repent in tears and anguish 
his irreparable mistake. We all need a sound mind 
in a sound body. The man who enters into life 
with a weakened body is greatly handicapped in the 
race for success and is sure to go down when the crisis 
comes ; but the man who enters into life with a weaker 
body than he ought to have had, is not only handi- 
capped, he is a criminal as well. The glutton, the 
cigarette fiend, the dope artist, the drunkard, are all of 
them criminals and vile sinners against their own 
bodies; they are all of them alike doomed to fail, to 
grovel in the dust. A vigorous, healthy body is neces- 
sary to success, to mastery, in any undertaking; it is 
fundamental; it is the foundation upon which every 
edifice of enduring human achievement must be firmly 
established. Therefore college students have no right 
to neglect their bodies, neither have they the right to 
care only for their bodies. Nor do I condemn innocent 
fun, fun that works harm to no one, or visitation, or 
social intercourse, but I condemn excess in these 
things, intemperance in them. Intemperance in these 
matters as in the use of wine leads eventually to 
degradation and shame, to slavery, not to mastery. 
The man in college who whiles away his golden 
moments, freighted as they are with the earnest of 
great things, surcharged as they are with the atmos- 
phere of elemental greatness, in pleasantry and gaiety 
and flippancy will be a loiterer and a hanger-on all 
the days of his life. Therefore if you would attain the 
mastery, be temperate in these matters. 

Nor should college students neglect the cultivation 
of their spiritual gifts. The pagan world was satisfied 
if a man had a sound mind in a sound body — that was 



Striving for the Mastery 85 

as far as their religion could carry them. But Chris- 
tianity and Christian institutions have a higher ideal; 
Christians cannot stop here. They must go farther. 
Our educational system should insist first, upon a sound 

..............o........................ bod y; secondly, upon a sound 

| I mind; thirdly, upon sound relig- 

t religion must j i(ms instruction as the basis of 

crown J character, as the anchor of the 

| f soul, as the inspiration of conduct, 

| | as the dynamo of all hopes, 

...,.........„......... # ........^..„.-i aspirations., and endeavors. It is, 

of course, possible to be intemperate in religious 
matters. The monks were — they shut themselves off 
from the world and gave themselves over to spiritual 
contemplation and the singing of psalms. No doubt 
they developed strong spiritual life, some few of them 
at least, but they did not gain the mastery of the world 
for Christ — they ran away from the world and left it 
to the devil. The Puritan, too, was intemperate in 
religion — everybody else was wrong and he alone was 
right — the spirit of intolerance was in him. No doubt 
there are types both of the monk and of the Puritan 
in every college. Then there are fanatics in religion 
as in other things, men who are deeply pious, women 
who are devoutly consecrated, yet whose example we 
should not follow because they are intemperate. The 
monk would lose the world to Christ in his endeavor to 
save himself. The Puritan would drive men from 
Christ by imposing hard conditions. The fanatic, who 
has zeal without knowledge, would disgust conserva- 
tive people, whose religion is just as genuine as his 
own, though not so much on the surface. They are all 
alike intemperate. We need temperance in religion 



86 The Making of Men 

as in other matters, in order to the mastery. If any are 
giving too much attention to spiritual matters at the 
expense of mental preparation and physical develop- 
ment, it is time for them to call a halt, to take an 
inventory of their stock in trade, to consider what it 
takes to attain the mastery, and to divide out their 
time accordingly. We want pious, devout, consecrated 
men and women, but these characteristics are possible 
along with strong minds and vigorous bodies and are 
oftenest found in their purest form in connection with 
these. I have no patience with the student who offers 
as a reason for not knowing his lesson that he was 
reading his Bible. I believe in Bible-reading, daily 
Bible-reading, but I believe it ought to help us do our 
secular work better and not to hinder us from doing it. 
Equally condemnable is the man who does not study 
his Sunday-school lesson or have room for a voluntary 
Bible Study Course or for social service in the name of 
Christ because his text-books demand all his time. He 
has missed the better part of college life. While in col- 
lege we need to develop strong, healthy bodies, keen, 
vigorous minds, pious, consecrated Christian character 
— all three, not any one of these, but all three — the 
glorious trinity of manly attributes which insure to 
their possessor ultimate mastery of the problems and 
perplexities and vicissitudes of life and fortune. 

Not only for us as college students, but for us 
equally when college days are over and for all our 
fellow men as well, this text has a meaning. If we 
would be masters, if we would excel, if we would 
make the world better and fill our place in the plan of 
God's universe, we must be temperate in all things. 
Do you wish to make money? Then make money. 



Striving for the Mastery 87 

That is a laudable ambition. Wealth has ever been 
the handmaid of progress and enlightenment and 
civilization. But don't be intemperate in your acquisi- 
tion of wealth. Don't take unfair advantage of your 
fellows; don't pave the pathway of your success with 
r ^..^.. e .....^......^... ? the skeletons of those outdone by 

? f you in the race. Use your means 

f the deeper | to help, not to hinder, to uplift, 
J L 11^ men R | not t0 degrade, your fellow man. 
| everywhere. | This is to master wealth, not to 
| I let it master you. The same prin- 



•••••«•••••••»••<••••••••»•••••••••• 



ciple holds true whether you 
enter one of the learned professions or follow the plow 
handles or stand behind the counter or minister from 
the sacred desk. All these vocations are worthy, but 
they may become unworthy by being used intemper- 
ately. Paul realized that even an apostle could lose 
his soul while being instrumental in the saving of 
others, when he said, "lest by any means, when I have 
preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." 
There is danger of prostituting even the most sacred 
calling to base ends, of being intemperate in using it. 



CHAPTEK SEVEN 



THE MORE ABUNDANT LIFE 



John 10:10 — "I have come that they might have 
life, and that they might have it more abundantly." 



SOCRATES, the greatest teacher of the Greeks, 
believed that perfect wisdom resided in the mind 
of each man and that the only thing necessary 
to develop a man was to get him to speak out what was 
in him. He, therefore, in all his teachings, never gave 
his pupils cut and dried knowledge, but ever sought to 
........................................... lead them to give expression to 

f | their own ideas. No teacher of 

I I Greece ever had such a following 

greek ideal f as he, and none exerted a more 

? TEACHING. !-,••« *, 

| I enduring influence upon after 

f f generations. No man ever devel- 

i..,..-..................................* oped by j^ teaching more 

intellectual giants. Socrates' idea of the teacher's 
function was that he should quicken the mind, develop 
the intellect, animate the reasoning faculties. This 
he did, and Plato and Aristotle and the other great 
philosophers and teachers of Greece after his day got 
their inspiration from him. To him and to them life 
was intellectual acumen, insight, mental gymnastics. 

Quintilian, the greatest teacher of the Romans, had 
no such idea of the indwelling of perfect wisdom in 
man as that held by Socrates. He looked upon life as 



90 The Making of Men 

an arena of action and upon man as a part therein. 
He believed that training was necessary to enable a 
man to do his best, and that that training should begin 
f -— .-„.,..,.., ■■,«..,„,,, in his boyhood and continue 
f | throughout his life. The teacher's 

I the roman t function to him was the training 
I educational f of a man for action by the disci- 
AIM * | pline of himself and his feelings. 

I | You can see this idea of his on 

w.*..........................-......* everv page of his work on oratory, 

the Institutiones Oratoriae, in twelve books. He 
taught some of the greatest men of Rome, such men 
as Pliny the Younger, the distinguished letter-writer 
and philanthropist, and Tacitus, the famous historian, 
besides the members of the imperial family, being the 
first teacher at Rome to receive a salary from the 
public treasury. His method of teaching literature, 
original with himself largely, is the method now in 
vogue in our, colleges and universities, and has never 
been improved upon. His idea was to touch the hidden 
sources of feeling of his pupils and thus develop them 
to be men of action in the fierce arena of life. And he 
succeeded. No man has ever been possessed of gentler 
feeling, more deft emotions, than Pliny the Younger, 
and no historian has ever couched in trenchant phrase 
so much of stirring passion as the matchless Tacitus — 
both of them pupils of this master teacher and the 
finished product of his exquisite handiwork. 

But it remained for Jesus Christ, not only the Son 
of God and Savior of the world, but also the prince and 
perfection of the teacher's art, to give to the world the 
true standard of teaching. In Him, Jesus of Nazareth, 
was not only found the perfectness of the Godhead 



The More Abundant Life 91 

bodily, but also in Him dwelt the principles that make 
teaching one of the noblest of the arts. Our 
Savior is spoken of as a teacher a dozen times where 
He is called a preacher once. He 
f looked upon His mission as that 

! christ the ! °^ a teacner - He ennobled the 
f matchless I teaching profession, and never 
| teacher. j maQ taught as He wherever He 

I I went the people flocked to hear 

;........-......^.......^.-.-,...»ft Him rpj^y f 0r g t their bodily 

needs in their eagerness to hang on His words. So 
popular was He that the elders and priests, the 
Pharisees and chief rulers of the Jewish race maligned 
Him and persecuted Him in the hope of breaking the 
spell of His teaching. In vain. The teachings of the 
Savior are more alive to-day than ever before. And 
though He wrote no books on pedagogy, more books 
have been written on Him and His method of teaching 
than on all other teachers of all lands in all times. 
Jesus Christ stands forth to-day fas the sublimest 
teacher in the world's history. Now what was His 
conception of the teacher's function? Was it to make 
of His pupils intellectual giants? Not at all. His 
enemies asked of Him how He knew letters, never 
having studied them. His pupils were mostly ignorant, 
unlearned men. Was it to beget pleasurable, passion- 
ate feelings in His followers, as with Quintilian? Not 
at all. His message was not to whoever knows, nor to 
whoever feels, but to "whoever wills, let him come and 
partake of the water of life freely." Not that our 
Savior would condemn knowledge or feelings, not that; 
but that He directed His instruction to the will, the 
arbiter of our being, the commander-in-chief of our 



92 The Making of Men 

knowing, feeling, and other psychical faculties. Christ 
knew that, if he could get men to will aright, the 
knowing and feeling would take care of themselves. 
His teaching is directed to the will, and His purpose 
as a teacher and as Savior is stated in the words of 
the text, "I have come that they might have life, and 
that they might have it more abundantly." Paul had 
this function of the Master in mind when he said, "For 
me to live is Christ." Paul's purpose as a teacher was 
that of his Lord — it was life, the more abundant life. 

In the oratory of the Greeks, Romans, and Chris- 
tians are found the same differences as to aims to be 
reached, ends to be attained, as we have just found to 
»*.■«. . «■,«,.*■« m animate their three greatest, most 
I I representative teachers. Greek 

| oratory | oratory sought to convince the 



f paraxleL $ intellect, Roman oratory to stir 

f purposes. | the emotions, Christian oratory 

| | to influence the will, beautify the 

*.......................,...,.............* conduct. Demosthenes, in his 

famous oration on the crown, sought to deduce proof 
that would convince the intellect of the hearers that he 
deserved the crown and that Aeschines' arguments 
were untenable. He is the world's greatest 
orator in the realm of logic and intellect. Cicero, in 
his defense of the poet Archias, disregards evidence 
which might have been had to prove his friend's right 
to the Roman franchise and citizenship, and spends his 
time in singing the praises of poets and the literary 
life. No more eloquent encomium has ever been paid 
the study of letters and the pursuit of the literary life 
than that paid to it in the person of the poet Archias 
on that occasion. And Cicero won his case, not because 



The More Abundant Life 93 

he showed by logic that Archias had a right to Koman 
citizenship, but because he made the judges feel that 
Archias deserved it. Cicero is therefore rightly ranked 
as the world's greatest orator in the realm of the 
feelings. The Christian orators, that is, the ministers 
of the gospel from Christ's sojourn on earth to the 
present day, on the other hand, have always directed 
the powers of their eloquence and the gifts of their 
persuasive art to convincing the will of men. They 
aim at conduct as the result of their preaching and 
teaching, conduct in its larger sense of life. This 
was Christ's aim— and no more eloquent sermon 
was ever delivered than the Sermon on the 
Mount. Though written from memory and many 
years after its delivery, its effect on him who 
reads is unparalled by that of any other piece 
of oratory or composition the world over. 
In the realm of the will, in the bivouac of 
conduct, of life, Jesus the Christ is the greatest orator 
in the world. 

The ministers of His gospel, His pupils, have fol- 
lowed in His steps. They are not satisfied with 
convincing the intellect of the reasonableness of 
the faith delivered to the saints, nor do they stop with 
........................................... awakening the emotions and stir- 

| I ring the feelings by their minis- 

2 character- | trations. Thev do not attain their 

? ISTICS OP THE f ,, ."„„,'.,. «, , 

1 more | aim, they feel that their efforts 

| abundant | are j n Ta i n unless Christian con- 

? LIFE. ? 

| | duct follows their labors, unless 

•.....•.....•-.........^.^.►.• w .«.«4 - n ^ e hearts f their hearers there 

appears life, the more abundant life. What, then, 
are the characteristics of this life, this more 



94 The Making of Men 

abundant life which Christ came to teach and 
preach, which His ministers strive to beget in their 
hearers, and which all His followers seek to attain? 

1. It is an anchored life. The more abundant 
life selects out of the many conflicting doctrines and 
teachings of the race that which is best for its own 
^^.^^-•......^^..-^•^....^ development and erects it into a 

| f doctrine and bond of belief — and 

f I this doctrine and bond of belief 

| it has an | constitute the view-point from 
I I which the individual looks out up- 

I | on the world, its problems, and life. 

*-♦..•.*..•-•.*-•-....-.-.»*.•«• rp^.g gj veg consistency, and none of 

us can live our best lives unless we are consistent, unless 
we have an ideal according to which we shape our 
actions, a line to which we hew in all matters presented 
to us for solution. Nor can we have such a standard, 
a basis for consistency, until we have settled within 
ourselves the things we believe and live right out from 
them our lives in harmonious, serene consistency, 
because we have settled on the fundamentals of life and 
life's work. So long as we wander, so long as we shift 
here and there, blown and tossed about by every whim 
or ism or doctrine of whatever character that comes our 
way, we cannot live the more abundant life. So long as 
we are uncertain where we stand on the great problems 
of life, so long as we have no compass within us pointing 
toward the north star of one unaltering purpose, so long 
will we fail to reach the point where we can hope for any 
large growth or wide usefulness in our lives. This 
means that Jesus was supremely wise when He said in 
the words of the text, "I am come that they might have 
life, and that they might have it more abundantly." 



The More Abundant Life 95 

Men who have brought things to pass in all ages of 
human development in all lands have felt the necessity 
of anchoring their life to a definite program of belief 
........................„.„..^...... ? on the great problems of exist- 

f ence, of taking a stand relative to 
| such an • ^ ne mean i n to of it all, whence they 
| anchor f could view life as a whole and in 
? NECESSARY - | a n its parts. Thus and thus only 

f I were they enabled to accomplish 

;.........................................* ^ great work the y wrought out 

in the world. They were men of force, of character, 
simply and solely because they had an ideal, a standard, 
in terms of which they weighed all problems and 
propositions and which gave them ballast on the voyage 
of life. Plato's standard was the doctrine of the 
immortality of the soul and the feeling that he must do 
all he could to bring the ideal intellectual life to be 
the real life. This is well brought out in his master- 
piece, The Republic, which republic never existed, no 
more than More's Utopia existed, but which Plato 
hoped, through intellectual contemplation, would 
some day exist. With such a standard and with such 
a purpose, Plato became one of the profoundest 
thinkers and philosophers who has yet appeared upon 
time's arena. Cicero had a definite, set belief in regard 
to fundamentals. His standard was to live the life 
of a goodly, patriotic citizen of the republic as it then 
existed, that he might be remembered when he was 
dead. Thus is explained the pertinacious vehemence 
with which Cicero condemned Mark Anthony in his 
Philippics:, even though he saw his own doom in such 
a course of action. We honor Cicero's name and 
memory, because true to his ideal and devoted to his 



9t> The Making of Men 

country's welfare, he died a martyr's death for his 
principles. Caesar, however, while he had a definite 
program of life, denied the immortality of the soul, felt 
that the few years allotted man on earth is his only 
life, and consequently spent that time in furthering his 
own ends, even to the overthrowing of his country's 
ancient and time-honored constitution. We can find 
numerous examples of the same truth among all 
nations, civilized and uncivilized, for the great deliver- 
ers of all peoples, the men who have stamped their 
personality on their fellows, have ever and always been 
men of an ideal, a standard, with an anchor to their 
lives. Of no man was this truer than of Gladstone, the 
great English premier, who while versed as few men in 
statecraft and literary lore, yet was so fixed in his 
religious convictions that his book in answer to the 
higher critics of the Scriptures stands without a peer. 
To live the more abundant life, then, you must have 
a view-point, an ideal, which shall serve as a ballast 
for your life's ship on the stormy voyage of human 
t -^.^.^„... # ...-..........«....... existence. And this means in our 

f I Christian land the putting on of 

| f Christ, the adoption of His stand- 

• christ the ? ar ^ f what a man ought to be, of 

I BEST ANCHOR. ; ... ... & ' 

| i what life ought to mean. With 

f | infinite pity do I think of the 

*•--—-•••- -••••"•••-* gropings in the dark of such 

master men as Cicero and Plato and Aristotle and 
Socrates — men who, despite the darkness in which 
they groped, rose to greatness and to fame. How often 
have I wished that such men could have known and felt 
and experienced the inspiration that the life of Christ 
and His matchless teachings would have brought into 



The More Abundant Life 97 

their lives. If they could live the lives they did live and 
catch the luminous glimpses they did catch of the 
spirit world without Christ, what could they have 
attained, what lapses of spiritual exaltation could they 
have covered with Him and the glorious leadership of 
His life and example ! How thankful we should be for 
the opportunity at our door, surrounding us on every 
hand, of making Christ our example, our guide, our 
leader, our inspiration, in our struggle upward for the 
attainment of the more abundant life! Let us take 
Christ into our lives as our ideal, the anchor of our 
eternal hope, and let us strive that our lives may be hid 
with Him in God. 

2. It is a consecrated life. The word consecrate 
comes from two Latin words, con, in its aoristic sense 
of completely, and sacro, dedicate, and therefore means 
•..e..... 8 ..... 9 ..e.........., ............ completely dedicated to the ideal 

| we have chosen for our life. The 
t complete I nermi t believes that he ought to 
? dedication f withdraw from active, actual life 
J TO THE IDEA]L - | and live in seclusion. He conse- 

| I crates himself completely to it, 

*............................,.........»..• an( j SQ j| yeg ou ^. kj g (j a y S Darwin 

in his early manhood conceived the theory of evolution, 
consecrated himself to its demonstration, and the 
myriad of facts that he could cite in substantiation of 
that theory became a proverb in his day and is referred 
to to-day as one of the marvels of the human intellect. 
Herbert Spencer consecrated himself to the develop- 
ment of a complete system of philosophy, a full-orbed 
exposition of life, and his Synthetic Philosophy, replete 
with learning, packed with fact, weighted down with 
information drawn from all quarters of the earth and 



98 The Making op Men 

sea and sky — a work which might well form the labor 
for the life-time of half a dozen scholars, stamps him 
as one of the world's great workers — monuments these 
of the power of the consecrated life. Livingstone conse- 
crated himself to the salvation of Africa. There he 
lived out his days, in deprivation and want, separated 
from the joys and comforts of civilized life. There he 
sowed the seeds that are now reaching fruition, and 
future generations of Africans, living in large cities or 
on wide-acred farms, surrounded by the blessings of 
peace and prosperity, and comforted by the inspiration 
of our holy religion, will rise up and call him blessed. 
Jesus Christ left the portals of glory and inhabited 
among men. They tried to make Him king. Satan 
offered Him the homage of all the world. But He 
would none of it. His purpose was to die the death, to 
show forth His matchless love for man, and so to save 
the world. He consecrated himself to that purpose, 
and millions everywhere throughout the world regularly 
assemble to worship in His name and receive inspira- 
tion from Him for their life and labors. 

Let me therefore urge you early to adopt a purpose 
in life. Consecrate yourself to it. Decide just as early 
as you can what that purpose is to be, then bend every 
......................................... energy of your being to its accom- 

fplishment. In this way success 
will attend your efforts, in this 
purpose ? wa y you will attain to positions 

MAKES LIFE. * - - , ■, . a , 

I j of usefulness and influence and 

I | mayhap of eminence, though that 

i.......................................,.i . g unesgential to the begt ii v i n g. 

High purposes, noble motives, ennoble men, not achieve- 
ment alone. You cannot fail to do the things to which 



The More Abundant Life 99 

you are consecrated. Therefore consecrate yourself to 
something. Choose your life's work and then early 
consecrate yourself to it; consecrate yourself to it, 
whether it be teaching, preaching, the law, medicine, 
farming, business — choose your field of labor, conse- 
crate yourself to it, stick to it and with Christ as your 
standard you will develop day by day to the full stature 
of a man or a woman of enduring worth of life and* 
character — you will be living the more abundant life 
in its quintessence. 

3. It is a contented life. This does not mean a life 
of idolent ease, atrophic inactivity. It means the lack 
of worry, that arch enemy of human contentment, 
...........a.............................. happiness, and longevity. Noth- 

| I ing so wears a man out, nothing 

f I so soon disqualifies him in soul 

faith a I an( i body, as worrv over the affairs 

| SINE aUA NON. I ... ^ " . 

| | or life. Worry makes more nerv- 

f | ous wrecks than all the business 

a........,................................* en terprises of the world combined. 

There is no remedy for it so sovereign as the contented 
life founded on the bed-rock of abiding religious faith. 
People of large faith in the ultimate realities of things 
are freest from worry. And the presence of anxiety 
and worry in the life is evidence of the lack of 
religious faith. The contented life, the more abundant 
life, is conditioned on faith — faith is its sine qua non. 
The man without an abiding faith cannot do his best, 
cannot live the more abundant life. 

This contented life bids you in whatever sphere of 
action your lot is cast, therewith and therein to be 
content. It also bids you to be the best man you can 
be, to attain the highest ends of which you and your 



100 The Making op Men 

inborn native gifts are capable. God wishes His 
creatures to grow, to advance, to prosper, to rise from 
their dead selves to higher things. There are a great 
........................................... many who do not understand this. 

f l They think that they must torture 

| | their flesh, deny themselves pleas- 

| be happy and ? ures that they mav therein please 

? CONTENTED. : mu ' 4- * 

| J God. This was more true of past 

| | ages than it is to-day, but it 

..........................................i 0D tains in certain quarters even 

to-day. It always produces the amen-corner type of 
Christian, with sad face, clouded countenance, and 
mournful appearance. To such, religion is not the 
rejoicing, the happiness, the contentment it ought to 
be. We need sunshiny, beamy-countenanced Chris- 
tians. The Catholic priest, who was assassinated in 
Colorado a short time ago, was a man greatly beloved by 
all for his piety and practical Christianity. But when 
his body was being prepared for burial great iron rings 
were found imbedded in his back — put there to torture 
his flesh and beget religious emotions. Such a thing 
would not be commended by our Savior. St. Jerome, 
one of the most scholarly and saintly of men, was so 
fond of literature, especially the pagan Roman litera- 
ture, that he decided to deny himself the privilege and 
pleasure of reading it. He could not, however, try him 
never so hard, withhold himself from his Virgil, Cicero, 
and Horace, to which sin he confesses with shame. His 
wrong was imaginary. Christ would never have 
imposed upon him such a denial of the normal devel- 
opment of his powers. Christ would have you be 
contented with your lot, that is, to be master over your 
circumstances, not to let them overmaster you by 



The More Abundant Life 101 

worry; but He would have you also progress, grow to 
full stature, be the best man, the best woman, you can 
be, in the sphere of action whereunto He has called you. 
One of the most fruitful sources of discontent is the 
idea, lingering like a frightful night-mare over the life, 
that we are in a place beneath our powers, that we are 
.-...o.................................... destined to higher things, that we 

| | are not appreciated at our true 

• work I wor th nor rated at our intrinsic 

I joyfully in f worthiness. The teacher in the 

J YOUR PLACE. J cross _ roadg pub]ic gch00l feGls 

I I that he ought to be teaching in a 

a...........,„... 8 ...........o.. 9 ..».....a C0 Hege. The college teacher feels 

that he ought to be president of the college or head of 
some department in a university. If he could just get 
from his present place of obscurity, where the eyes of 
the world are turned from him, where he is not appre- 
ciated, he would forthwith spring into prominence and 
become a great man. The lawyer, the physician, the 
minister in the small town or village, conscious of 
the limitation of the horizon of his influence, feels the 
ranklings within him of a great soul, hears the whis- 
perings of great things dinning in his ears. If he could 
only get to the great city, he would at once reach the 
pinnacle of fame in his profession, all eyes would be 
turned upon him, the praise and the eclat of the world 
would be his. The student in college chafes at the dull, 
deadening routine, at the daily monotonous bells, 
periods, and lectures, is restless to get out in the world 
where he can do something. He feels that the world 
will set a truer estimate upon him than his teachers. 
He longs for active life, is unhappy, and loses the best 
opportunity he will ever have of preparing himself for 



102 The Making of Men 

a career of achievement and acquisition. Thus it is in 
all the spheres of life — discontent, unhappiness, failure, 
pessimism. This is not Christ's way, who would have 
us do whatsoever our hands find to do with all our 
might. The vital thing in all such discontent is to get 
to work. Be forward-looking? Yes, but never be discon- 
tented. The sovereign path to attainment, to lasting 
results, is through perseverance street and up difficulty 
hill. Walk that street, climb that hill, and remember 
that it is always the street and ever the hill right at 
your hand. Don't whine and pine your golden moments 
of fleeting opportunity away. Be a hero, be a man, 
take hold of your duties with a will, make a way, and 
before you know it you will be happy, contented in your 
sphere. Before you are aware of it the places above 
you will be beckoning for you to come on, to come up 
higher. Keep your eyes on the stars, but keep your feet 
on the earth and your hands at your task. Whatsoever 
your hands find to do, do it with all your might — 
this is to lead the contented life, this is to attain to the 
more abundant life. 

4. It is a serviceable life. Life and action are 
synonymous terms. The life that ceases to act is soon 
dead. Inaction, stagnation, death, are but quick steps 
? ^......^„........k»»...........^... in a continuous, successive pro- 

f I cess. Our muscles lose the power 

• devoted • °^ locomotion if unused and our 
I service life's J eyes would forget how to see 
| corner-stone. | unlegg employe(L Life and action 

| I are correlative, inter-related, 

a-*...*^^.-..........-.^...* mutually dependent. This is true 

in the physical world. It is no less true in the spiritual 
world, of which the physical world is but a reflection 



The More Abundant Life 103 

and a shadow. There are no drones in the religion of 
Christ. He said, "My Father worketh hitherto and I 
work/' and so must His disciples. A slothful man and 
a Christian have no community with each other. The 
Christian is a vital kinetic force for good in the world. 
He is no sluggard. His hands are continually at work 
doing the things his heart shows him he ought to do. 
The segment of his being is completed by the circle of 
his doing. He is all right within, he feels the impress 
of the divine image stamped upon him, but he is not 
satisfied unless he is at work, is doing something for 
the Master's kingdom and the salvation of other souls. 
He shows his faith by his works. Whatever his field of 
activity, whether in the pulpit, in the teacher's chair, 
on the rostrum, on the hustings, behind the counter or 
the plow, he is at work with his labor sweetened by 
the consciousness that he is doing God service and his 
fellow man good. His whole life, if spent as a Christian 
ought to spend it, would be one grand paean of praise 
to God and sacrificing service to his fellow man. He 
realizes that what he undertakes for self will perish 
with himself, but that what he undertakes for God and 
His Kingdom, for his fellow man and his elevation, will 
endure and live on forever. And in this realization and 
its consequent endeavor he is living the more abundant 
life — the life that Christ came to bring to men — the 
only life worth living. 

Ho, ye who spend your strength for naught, 
And slight the blessings Christ hath brought, 
Toilers for earth and time and sense, 
Oh, what will be your recompense? 
Of all that's done beneath the sky, 
little hath immortality ; 



104 The Making op Men 

What's done for earth fails by and by, 
What's done for God can never die. 

Ho, ye who join the eager strife, 
For gold, or fame, or pride of life, 
Indulge the lust of flesh and eye, 
And for the world with worldlings vie ; 
Death shall undo your toils so vain, 
And leave you no abiding gain; 
What's done for time ends by and by, 
What's done for God can never die. 

Scepters and crowns will mock our trust, 
Monarchs may crumble back to dust ; 
By moth, or rust, or thief, or fire, 
Treasures shall flee and hopes expire ; 
Desire shall fail and strength decay ; 
The world itself shall pass away ; 
What's done for sense fails by and by, 
What's done for God can never die. 

When comes the king in royal might, 

To crush the wrong and crown the right, 

When all the saints in glory meet, 

No more to die, no more to weep, 

When thrones are set and crowns are given. 

With all the rich rewards of heaven, 

Oh, in that glorious by and by, 

What's done for God will never die. 

— Edward Payson Marvin 



CHAPTER PLIGHT 



THE INGREDIENTS OF TRUE LIVING 



Exodus 32:18 — "The noise of them that sing do I 
hear" 



MOSES had gone up into the mountain to get from 
God the laws by which the delivered children 
of Israel were to be governed. It was a critical 
time in their national career. In it were involved 
eternal issues as well as the issues of temporal affairs. 
It was proper under such circumstances for the people 
........................................... to be concerned in spirit for the 

f l helpful outcome of the great and 

? f important mission of their leader. 

the scene f Moses remained longer in the 

? BEFORE US. I , . , ,; , . M 

I | mountain than they had thought. 

Their faith weakened. They cried 
out against him. They forsook 
God. They called upon Aaron for relief, and with 
their offerings he produced for them a golden calf. 
This they worshiped, giving themselves to music, sing- 
ing, and dancing, by such conduct disqualifying 
themselves for the reception of the law which God was 
inditing for them on tables of stone. 

There was nothing wrong per se in the singing of 
the people. Singing is an act of worship, when it is 
done in a worshipful spirit. The Scriptures specifically 
enjoin singing upon Christians as a duty, and it always 






106 The Making op Men 

adds to the uplift and inspiration of the service of the 
sanctuary. These people could have been singing at 
this time and yet not have offended their God, provided 
r ..........„...,...„..........„.....^ they had been singing in a truly 

f worshipful spirit. Instead they 

| were engaged in wild, orgiastic 

singing per se j singing and dancing before an idol 

NOT A SIN. ™ 

I | of their own making, entirely dis- 

f honoring their leader, Moses, and 
♦.^...«....»^..- # .....,.....^.,„^.i their deliverer, God. Such singing 

is always sinful and under such circumstances ex- 
tremely so. And no wonder, seeing their spiritual unfit- 
ness to receive the law, Moses broke the stones and 
visited upon them a speedy and condign punishment. 

From this circumstance, deplorable as it is, we 
should be able to derive certain suggestions for profit- 
able living and the correct utilization of our time and 
talent. Eightly understood and 
J interpreted, this incident sheds 
I light upon various aspects of the 



WHAT THIS 



scene should f true, vital life, the life we rightly 
I call Christian. It contains sug- 
I gestions for us as to the real 
*.........................................* purpose of life, how we can pre- 
pare to fulfill that purpose, what the nature of that 
preparation should be, how we are to use the power our 
preparation will yield us, and what place recreation 
and leisure hours should have in the program of our 
living as well as how this margin of life should be 
conserved. An investigation, though brief, into these 
inviting labyrinths of thought would seem to be profit- 
able on any occasion and especially on an occasion like 
this and to an audience like this, buoyant as it is with 



The Ingredients op True Living 107 

the pent-up powers of exuberant youth and ambitious 
to fulfill in noble personal living the high and holy 
obligations of Christian citizenship. 

What life's purpose is has always been an engaging 
theme and how best to spend it has been equally as 
engaging because involved inextricably in its purpose. 
... e ....,...,...„... s .. e ................ 1 Philosophers have discussed it. 

f f It is the old, jet new question. 

? life's | Epicurus said it was pleasure. 

| 1 52o52j? t The Stoics thou g ht ii: consisted in 
f be high. f self-control, through strict devoted 

| I adherence to this principle attain- 

A........,........,.,......,..............* - n g | Q i n( j e p en( j eilce f external 

circumstances as well as victory over internal conflicts. 
Plato conceived it to be the subordination of lower to 
higher impulses. Aristotle advanced the doctrine of 
the sense of proportion, or the symmetrical develop- 
ment of the man, a sort of Darwinian evolution in 
morals. The Christian can accept no one of these, 
for whom the purpose of life, its end and aim, is 
involved in love of God and from this central force 
flows every principle of life and conduct. We gather 
this from the incident whence comes our text. The real 
sin of the people was not in singing, but in not loving 
their God. Had they had the proper love for Him, they 
would never have been singing such songs under such 
circumstances. This incident teaches that the purpose 
of life is best and most completely realized when men 
seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, 
when their lives have as their basic, energizing, con- 
trolling principle love of God, from which will flow 
love to man and service to Him. 



108 The Making of Men 

And this is a truth which college students and 
college graduates need ever to remember and keep 
vigilantly before them. The curriculum offers many 
r ..^...„..^.^....^„.......... avenues of insight into science, 

f | literature, and philosophy, and the 

f the real | tendency in many quarters is to 



erect other standards for life's 



BASIS OF 
ENDURING 

f success. | purpose than the one we have 
shown to be fundamental and 
Christian. Learning is a good 
thing, but an educated man whose purpose of life does 
not flow from the eternal principle of love to God is 
hopelessly crippled as to the maximum usefulness of his 
activity. The Christian basis of life is the only sure 
foundation of a successful career and the system of 
education, Which strikes at it or which pleads its 
inability to supply it or which even neglects or ignores 
it, is fatally defective at heart and lacking in the real 
constructive principle of true education. "First things 
first" should be the aim of every institution dedicated 
to intellectual development and the fundamental first 
thing is to have the dynamo of life excited by the 
Christian principle of love to God. When this condi- 
tion had been fulfilled and this lesson learned, we shall 
be ready to understand the other subsidiary teachings 
of the text, and to fashion our lives like real architects 
into enduring character-structures of lasting value and 
worth. 

The next truth which we deduce from the incident 
before us is that preparation is needful in order to 
permanent attainment in any department of human 
endeavor. First lay the foundation, settle upon the 
basic principles of life, then you are in position to 



The Ingredients op Trus} Living 109 

begin to get ready to live. And in that simple phrase, 
"to get ready/' there is involved the difference between 
success and failure often. The Israelites not only were 
..^.^............................. ? not worthy of the Ten Command- 

f ments because thev failed to 
f preparation f incorporate true love for God in 
• follow^ * their regimen of conduct, but also 
f high purpose. I because they were unwilling to 
| f make the necessary preparation 

i..,........^...............,..... 9 .....i £ Qr ^ ie p r0 p er reception of their 

law-giver upon his return and for the law which he was 
to bring with him. The sad part of it was that they 
did not feel the necessity for such preparation on their 
part. They were anxious for the law, but wished it as 
a free gift, without any preparation for it. But God 
has not arranged the world that way. He is willing 
to do His part, but we must do ours also, and in no 
other manner can we obtain the bounty of His love 
toward us. These Israelites should have spent the time 
their law-giver was in the mountain, not in feasting 
and dancing and singing to an idol, but in prayer, and 
supplication, and the singing of spiritual songs unto 
the Lord, abiding His will and anxious to know and 
do it. 

You who have now come with ripe success to the 
conclusion of your college career need not that I should 
enlarge in your presence upon the necessity of prepara- 
tion, thorough preparation, for life and its absorbing 
duties. Because of keenness of vision and foresight on 
your part or on the part of those near and dear to you 
and to whom you are dear, you of the graduating class 
four years ago sought this place of preparation, and 
during the days and months and years that have 



110 The Making of Men 

intervened you have labored earnestly, faithfully, 
devotedly, and so have arrived at the graduation period 
of your preparation, — a preparation which has been 

, physical, mental, cultural, spirit- 

| ual. You have done this work of 

the worst I preparation well, according to 

fultre to t ^ our several abilities and apti- 

prepare. f tudes and your Alma Mater is 

f glad at this glad season to place 

. .,.„.„.„.„., ...........,... ,.„i U p 0n -^ our |3 row the ivy-leaf of 

victory and in your hand the diploma as evidence to 
the world of your fitness to render efficient service. 
But many who came with you are not here at this happy 
time. They came with a joy as keen and relishing as 
your own and entered upon the race course of college 
life with zest and enthusiasm. The course went over 
many rough places; the journey became tiresome; the 
work of preparation became irksome to them; their 
vision became blurred and they failed to discern clearly 
the need for the course and the preparation for life it 
would give, and so they one by one lagged behind, walk- 
ed leisurely when they had ceased to run, and finally 
dropped out entirely. And in so doing they have greatly 
impeded their chances of great attainment. The power 
of their life to contribute permanently to their day and 
generation is materially lessened. You have often 
heard it said that there is plenty of room at the top. 
The reason for that saying is that the great masses 
of men are not equipped adequately to stand at the top. 
Xothing but lack of preparation, provided true char- 
acter underlies, can keep the determined man from 
reaching the highest goal. The temptation to get 
started in business or enter upon the practice of 



The Ingredients of True Living 111 

professional life is so great with many promising 
persons that they by yielding doom themselves to 
mediocrity, while capable of primacy — they must follow, 
while with adequate preparation they should lead. The 
worst failure is failure to prepare — to prepare for 
what we are capable of doing. The saddest men must 
ever be those who, looking back over their mediocre 
lives, conclude and rightly that undue haste to enter 
upon their careers wrested from them their opportunity 
of great achievement, when it deprived them of adequate 
preparation. Nor would I have you worry much over 
the kind of work for which you will make preparation. 
All work that is honorable is worthy of the best in a 
man, but he cannot attain that best without prepara- 
tion. Get ready ; then begin. 

And this brings us to another truth, equally 
important and fundamental, that our preparation is 
for a work, a life-work. These Israelites did not realize 
.......................................... that God had called Abraham 

| from Ur of the Ohaldees to be 

I father of their race, through whom 

W °follow LD t a11 na tions of the earth should be 

._, preparation. j blessed. They had heard that 

? j wonderful prophecy and knew 

a.................^....................-* ^ at j t wag gea j e( j by a covenant 

with God and that this covenant had been renewed 
again and again with the head of their race. Yet they 
did not realize its import nor incline themselves to 
undertake to labor for its accomplishment. And to 
get them ready to fulfill that promised covenant of 
blessedness to the nations their peerless leader had 
gone up into the mountain to get from their Ruler a 
code of moral law for their guidance, while they during 



112 The Making op Men 

his absence, not mindful of the stupendous task await- 
ing them, nor appreciating its worth, fall away into sin 
and idolatry. And like them many men have failed 
utterly because with a great work to be done, they 
either were unable to understand its need, or unwilling 
to undertake its burden. The routine of a vocation is 
what we all need to give steadiness to life. It will save 
us from physical and moral stagnation. The man who 
can do the routine work well is the man who will arrive 
at the summit at last. The inconvenience of routine 
is the characteristic of it that most people resent, but 
the very inconvenience is often the discipline we need 
to qualify us for large attainment. A man to succeed 
in any great work must deny himself, take up his cross, 
and do the routine work necessary in his particular line. 
We have said that it does not matter so much what 
line of work we engage in, provided it is an honorable 
business. We have now to remark, what is equally 
r ,.....,.......... e ...„ e ....^...,.. ? true, that our preparation, how- 

J | ever thorough and complete, is 

! happy he I h°ll° w mockery and the strength 
? whose work I it brings us worse than wasted 
| Is FOUND - J energy, unless it be utilized i n 
| I helpful, uplifting endeavor. The 

*........^..-.~.........,.....,„....-A sluggards are like so many weights 

on the wheels of progress. Lazy persons are an 
impediment to racial development. The idle rich and 
the idle poor alike deserve our pity, and the law 
should define a vagabond as the man who has no 
occupation and compel the rich vagabond as well as 
the poor one to engage in some form of profitable 
industry. We all need to work. Happy is the man 
that has found his work and whose preparation is 



The Ingredients of True Living 113 

adequate to meet its demands for efficient service. It 
has been charged that there are a thousand college 
graduates in New York City without employment. I 
am not denying this statement, but lamenting it. I 
will not even plead in extenuation of it, what is entirely 
true, that the per cent, of college graduates unemployed 
is much smaller than the per cent, of those who have 
not had such choice opportunity of preparation for 
life's duties. The point that grieves me is that a 
thousand men in any city, capable of work, should be 
without it. That is the pity and pathos of the situation. 
Such men cannot know true happiness. 

There have been races among whom labor, work, 
honest toil to gain a living, was regarded as degrading. 
There have been others among whom work, while not 
r ....................„...... e ........,.. ? considered degrading, was regard- 

| f ed as irksome and an evil to be 

I delivered of as soon as circum- 

the dignity f stances would permit in each 

OF WOTtFC 

| man's case. The Christian idea 
t respecting it is the noblest, the 
A.....*....................,.....,„.„...i gUD ij mes t y e ^- conceived, that he 

that is greatest should be servant of all, that work is 
not a curse pronounced upon Adam for his disobedi- 
ence, but a blessing which every man who wills may 
have, and he in greatest abundance who is most capable 
and serves most acceptably. In the light of this 
Christian doctrine of the sanctity of work, what an 
opportunity of abiding usefulness opens up to those 
who are thoroughly prepared ! 

It has been said that it is easy to work in this age, 
because everybody works. But it is not easy to render 
the maximum of service, and we cannot do it, unless 



114 The Making of Men 

our preparation has been of the highest order. And 
herein lies a serious danger in our present-day social 
order. The young are so infused with the zeal of 
......»,«...... service that they are unwilling to 

| I undergo the patient preparation 

j patient, | necessary to large achievement in 
| preparation | their field of endeavor. Ten or 
| necessary. \ twelve years in secondary educa- 
| | tion, four years in college, and an 

a...„..^..-.~.....^.^.^^.^..^ e q ua j number in the university or 

technical or professional school, seem too much time to 
them to be expended in getting ready to work. They 
make the same mistake the children of Israel made. 
If Moses had come down from the mountain the next 
day after he went up, the people would gladly have 
accepted his laws, but they would not abide forty days 
and during that time devote themselves to spiritual 
preparation with view to their fitness for the law. 
Many young people will spend two or three years after 
their high school days in preparing for their life-work, 
but seven or eight they will not think of — it is entirely 
too much they say, and yet they cannot fail to observe 
that those around them who made such thorough 
preparation have forged dashingly ahead of their com- 
petitors, who, though longer in service, were yet less 
adequately equipped. 

We are inclined, many of us, to the belief that 
steady application and self-confidence will eventually 
yield the finest fruitage of success. "There is nothing 
that can keep a determined man from success ;" "Labor 
conquers all things;" "He can who thinks he can," — 
these and other adages similar to them, framed and hung 
in the recesses of our mind, if not in our offices and our 



The Ingredients of True Living 115 

studios, sum up in succinct form the philosophy that 
underlies this belief. But it is a false philosophy. As 
we have seen, we must have a lofty conception of the 
.......................................... purpose of life, without which no 

| I amount of effort can yield success 

avoid | i n its true sense, and added to 

? NARROWNESS : „ . , , 

| if you would | this must be thorough preparation 
attain f j n or d er to get the maximum of 

? THE HEIGHTS. J . . . 

| I efficiency in service. And this 

i........,..,...,....*.****..*...* preparation must be broad as well 

as special. The specialist is a narrow man at best, and 
can be nothing else. He sees life in the small. The 
dentist sees the entire human system from the stand- 
point of the teeth and the oculist from that of the 
eyes, and a similar narrowness runs through every 
specialty whether of the body or of the industrial or 
social organism. The specialist's education should 
make his narrowness as little noticeable as possible. 
It should therefore be liberal first and then special, 
broad and then narrow, that he may render to his 
generation the best service of which he is capable and 
make himself the master of his profession and not his 
own soul its slave. 

But to act upon this principle is to run counter to 
the educational propaganda of the last quarter century 
and oppose the educational program of the present day, 
the fundamental doctrine of which is the elimination 
from the curriculum of everything which is not directly 
utilitarian and mercenary in its import. "Vocational 
Training; fpecial and Technical fchooif; Farm-Life 
fchoolf ; Normal f choolf ; Domef tic fcience ; Buf inef f 
College! ; Manual Training ; Less to Do with Latin and 
Greek Roots and More Attention to Potato and Cabbage 



116 The Making of Men 

Roots; We Shall Get More Good From Our Schools 
When the Sound of the Hammer and the Buzz of the 
Saw Shall Have Supplanted the Hhythin of This or That 
... c ,.o......^..... .....,......,..,„. Piece of Poetry Couched in a Lan- 

I 1 guage Now Deservedly Dead" — 

| false I These sentiments and others like 

| educational f them and in many cases more 
I | extravagant than they, are the 

i | slogans of our present-day educa- 

............*..........................-; ft onal i ea( i e r S) true soldiers they 

of the bread-and-butter-and-pie brigade, but unfit 
guides in the great work of preparing the young for 
life ; for life is more than making a living. They forget 
that the most practical education is that which puts 
the emphasis on preparation to live a life rather than 
on making a living, that centers around man rather 
than around practical. Sad indeed will be our national 
plight, if these would-be prophets of the new educa- 
tional order ever succeed in shaping the schools of the 
country according to their professed ideals. But that 
they will succeed in their endeavors is hardly conceiv- 
able, in view of the common-sense of the American peo- 
ple and in view of recent investigations in other coun- 
tries which for many years have tried the vocational 
educational system alongside the liberal and cultural 
with the vocational training added later. German ex- 
perts declare that those trained in the vocational schools 
alone do not measure up in after-life to those who have 
liberal, classical, cultural training, and are far behind 
those who have added vocational training in the form 
of specialization to their liberal, classical, cultural 
training. And this is exactly as we should expect. Our 
work requires at our hands thorough preparation, 



The Ingredients of True Livifca 117 

which in its turn requires breadth and depth of scholar- 
ship, sympathy with knowledge and life in all its 
related departments and complete mastery of that 
department in which we have elected to do our work. 

But remember that the Israelites were singing and 
that singing is not in itself sinful. This suggests a 
further thought, a thought which this strenuous age 
? .....,........o..o..... e ..............o... needs to think and practice, that 

I | incessant work is hurtful to life 



? 3iake wise use | in every avenue of its activity. A 
I leisure™ urs I man cannot work all the time at 
| of life. I his vocational duties and be a 
I J complete man. It will wreck his 

i...........,........,,.,..,,..,...........; h ealtll . j t will narr0 w his sympa- 
thies ; it will limit his horizon ; it will dwarf his spirit ; 
it will shrivel his soul. He must have leisure, hours for 
recreation, an occasional vacation, time for singing, 
amusement, and enjoyment, in which his sympathies 
shall ripen, his horizon widen, his soul expand. Many 
people waste this leisure time, dissipate in unwise use 
of it what little vitality they have left from their daily 
toil, and so return to their duties less able to work than 
if they had had no leisure. The manner in which you 
spend your leisure moments will largely determine the 
complexion of your life and the richness of your 
success. If you are wise, you will learn that real rest 
is found not in wasting time in distracting amusements 
or in doing nothing, but, as Bismark discovered, in 
change of work, and acting upon this discovery you will 
have an avocation upon which you will expend habit- 
ually at least a portion of the leisure recreation hours 
that shall be yours. This will not make you less a 
specialist, but a sympathetic one, one who can feel 



118 The Making of Men 

sympathy for others than his own colleagues or frater- 
nity-men. Our Master spoke with authority as a 
religious teacher — that was His specialty — but He 
could also sympathize with every department of life. 
And while we may not hope to emulate Him in our 
capacity for sympathy with life, yet we can learn from 
Him the needful lesson of successful living, that our 
margin of life, our spare, recreation, amusement hours, 
should be utilized to some righteous end, not squan- 
dered in vice or frittered away in idleness. It is 
frequently these spare moments, used not to make a 
living, but to live our life, that enrich the soul and 
bring to out* success in our daily vocation an enduring 
halo of lasting achievement. And in many cases the 
achievements in these leisure moments, the moments 
we must spend otherwise than upon our daily occupa- 
tion, give a color and a charm to life that lift us into 
the realm of supreme joy and noblest service and 
serenest peace of mind and sweetest bliss of soul. 

"If only we strive to be pure and true, 
To each of us all there will come an hour, 
When the Tree of Life shall burst into flower, 
And rain at our feet a glorious dower 
Of something grander than ever we knew." 



CHAPTER NINE 



LIFE'S BASIC PRINCIPLES 



Romans 12:11 — "Not slothful in business, fervent 
in spirit, serving the Lord." 



EVERY building presupposes a foundation, and the 
more towering the structure the more important 
the question of its foundation immediately 
becomes. The shanty need not go down to the clay or 
the bed-rock, but the skyscraper must. Every organi- 
zation of human beings must have a constitution, 
written or traditional, and the 
I importance of the organization 
varies direct lv with the excellence 



•■U..*..^. *..#.. C--3--0--3"*"*"*"*"* 



t 



1 w^SSitTS^ I of the constitution. How a mere 

f f handful of friends may organize 

J | themselves for literary develop- 

•.^...^.^.......,....................4 ment or soc i a j conviviality need 

not be a serious matter, but the fundamental principles 
underlying the civil authority of a modern nation 
become vital to all mankind. So it is of life, my life 
and your life. The attention we pay to our life's 
foundation will largely determine the interest our 
fellows will have in our life. The skyscraper, whose 
steel supporting columns go down far into the earth's 
interior till they find a worthy resting-place on the 
unyielding framework of the world, not the fragile 
pigmy hovel squatting by the ocean's brim or perched 



120 The Making op Men 

upon the mountain's peak, attracts our attention, com- 
mands our admiration. The Magna Charta, the Declara- 
tion of Independence, the constitutions of the nations, 
young and old alike, in the progress of liberty and free- 
dom, not the by-laws of the Burgrahaw Country Club or 
of the Green Mountain Tennis Union, challenge our 
interest and compel our sympathetic concern. The 
life, cast in a large mold, placed in a large room as 
David conceived it, the life that therefore must have a 
broad, deep, solid foundation, and an expanding out- 
look on human problems and issues, not the life of the 
dwarfed perspective, of narrow horizon, of unstable 
substructure, does the world's work and receives, 
because it deserves, the world's applause. 

The foundation of life is its important part. With- 
out stability, without excellence here, no progress of 
enduring type is possible. Animals make no advance- 
•-^..•..•-•...-•-•..•.^..•-•..... t m ent from day to day nor from 
| t age to age because they make no 

I the • P r °vision for it, and they make 

f foundation f no provision for it in that they 
| IMPORTANT - J pay n o heed to the foundation of 
f I their existence. Many human 

i.................,,............*........* De i n g S are animals in this regard 

— they accept life as they find it, without foresight, 
eking out a paltry existence, leaving the world no 
better, perhaps worse, than they found it. The problem 
of human progress is the problem of getting the 
individual human being in youth to provide an adequate 
foundation for the duties and responsibilities of man- 
hood. To this end we expend millions of dollars on 
schoolhouses and keep a quarter of a million persons 
employed in teaching. To this end Ave encourage a 



Life's Basic Principles 121 

myriad almost of organizations and foster at great 
outlay a magnificent coterie of tendencies ameliorative 
and uplifting in their import. 

The college student encounters two crises in his 
preparation work, in constructing his life's foundation. 
The first of these comes when he arrives at college. He 
......,...........*.......................• finds himself at this momentous 

f I juncture of time in a new atmos- 

f entering I phere, among strangers, from 
bringTon a • whom he is to select his bosom 
crisis in life. I companions, companions who are 
I to have weighty influence in shap- 
...............,..,.....,...,.......,..,..; ing hig co u e g e car eer. Heretofore 

his companions had been those of his home and com- 
munity circle; he has had his parents' wise counsel as a 
corrective to the often erratic judgment of youth. Now 
he must be his own counselor. In the home there was 
always the pressure of an authority outside himself 
tending to compel him to give attention to fundamental 
issues and duties first and to social, convivial matters 
secondarily. Now he is to determine to what ends he 
will direct his attention and to what duties and interests 
give precedence. He faces a grave crisis- -a crisis 
which carries many a promising life down, in institu- 
tions which are not careful as to the morals of those 
who come and as to the moral training of those who 
have come. How important it is that at this critical 
time the most wholesome, uplifting influences be 
brought to bear upon the life and that distractions and 
allurements of an insidious, hurtful character, be 
eliminated, we all know. The first month in college 
will ordinarily determine the emphasis a man will place 
relatively on the essential constituents of life-prepara- 



122 The Making of Men 

tion, or the embellishments of living that have small 
and only a subordinate, while yet a very real, place in 
life's substructure. 

Those who survive the first crisis come to the second 
— graduation day — the day, when, having laid the 
foundation deep, strong, massive, the real work of 
, . -, .„.„.„.,„,„.„.,..■■.„.■,.,,. erecting the superstructure begins 
f f — to Commencement Day, the day 

? crisis number | when the graduates are to com- 

i TWO — COM- i . u .,-, ,, . ,. j. j 

I MENCEMENT f meilCe t0 DUlld theiT llVeS > t0 d ° 

I day. ! their part in human uplift, to 

I j weave into the warp and woof of 

4^.^..«.».^«....»^^. # >...o-i }! Unian achievement the texture 

of their own life's ideals. A critical day, this — a more 
critical than that on which four years ago college 
training was initiated. While we meet a new freedom 
and a new responsibility when we become citizens in 
the college community, yet even there we are surrounded 
by friendly advisers, whose chief pleasure is to give 
direction and impetus to the lives committed to them 
and whose chief business is not self-aggrandizement 
at our expense, but our advancement at their expense 
of energy, patience, and concern. Our course of studies 
was largely determined for us and wholesome advice 
and kindly admonition awaited us at every snare or 
pitfall. But on Commencement Day we face a changed 
order of things. We find ourselves in the larger throng 
of the bustling world of business and commerce, and 
while there will be friendly guide-posts along its way, 
we shall encounter the sign-posts of enemies also, and 
we must distinguish between them. Our work will not 
be longer laid out for us; it must be of our own 
choosing. The days of youth in the home and the days 



Life's Basic Principles 123 

of foundation work in college will prove powerful, 
willing allies to keep us true and strong for the right, 
but they will be allies only and not lords ; we ourselves 
must command them or they cannot assist us to success. 
In a crisis like this, a crisis that comes but once in 
a lifetime, the need of a chart and compass is impera- 
tive. Unless we have a rudder, we cannot control our 

. vessel ; and unless we have a life- 

I | policy, founded on basic princi- 

l a chabt and ? pies, a policy that is adequate and 
| compass of | comprehengiy^ we cannot hope 

I necessary. | that our life will be symmetrical 
| | or full-orbed. The foundation 

A........-..„....-....,.-.„...v....i laid - n the years of preparation 

for our vocation will stand us in good stead, provided 
we have constructed it out of the proper material and 
imbedded it on the solid rock of human character. But 
the foundation is not the entire edifice. Skill and 
patience and judgment will be demanded in the com- 
pletion of the structure, and these qualities must be 
contained in our life-policy, our program of living and 
working, if we are to achieve enduring results. The 
fundamental qualities of such a life-policy, of such a 
program of righteous living, are contained in the 
passage of Scripture taken as the basis of the remarks 
of this occasion, under three heads : 

i. attention to business 

"Not slothful in business," says the inspired writer 
to the brethren living in the world's capital city, and 
there was need of the message. The ancient world 
regarded work with aversion. Slaves were to do the 
necessary tasks of life. Naturally they identified their 



124 The Making of Men 

slavery with their work and chafed under its exactions. 
Paul counsels all who render service to do so without 
slothfulness and it goes without saying that the mis- 
? -...-^.^.....„.^..^..... sionary tent-maker expected every 
f | man to work. Christ had ennobled 

work!— that - h° nes t toil when He labored for 



I 



is the divine f eighteen years at the carpenter's 

nv.rrnvrvivrmv : . _ _ _ . . _..... 



INJUNCTION. 



| — — — | bench. Labor, for the Christian, 
f J whether physical or mental, is 

i..............,........ e ......^...-.i divine an( j no tnily Christian man 

is happy without his post of service in the world. 
Sluggards, drones, lazy men, we have indeed and always 
will have, parasites they upon the social body, but they 
are the abnormal, not the normal man — a complete 
overturning this of the Roman conception of the degra- 
dation entailed by work and an absolute reversion from 
the ancient exaltation of freedom from vocational 
duties having a materialistic aspect — a clear-cut denun- 
ciation of the old attitude of Roman civilization toward 
all effort for personal maintenance, and the glorifica- 
tion of its opposite. 

Many feel that the twentieth century American pays 
too strict adherence to his business demands and that 
he is fast approaching the precipice of nervous prostra- 
........................................ tion consequent upon too arduous 

f | attention to a single interest. I 

f a false f freely grant that there are men 
j N °Svous UT I wh0 have wrecked their lives by 
f prostration, f what is familiarly known as stren- 
J | uousness, but it is not true that 

i. # .........»... # ........^.....« e ».u4 ^g American people as a whole 

work too hard, nor is it demonstrable, according to the 
latest books on social phenomena, that our people are 



Life's Basic Principles 125 

more nervous than the English or the German or the 
French. The pulse of the entire world has been quick- 
ened within the last half-century, whether because of 
the rapid strides we Americans have made in material 
development or to the multiplication of the world's 
producing capacity through inventions we know not, 
but the rate of doing things has quickened and a new 
energy has transfused the world. But this does not 
mean that the world's population is on the verge of 
nervous wreck, even if the patron saint of our women is 
St. Martha and of our men St. Vitus, as some wag has 
put it. Speed is not nervousness nor is rapidity of 
production evidence of social neuralgia. 

We work shorter hours than ever before in history. 
No age in mankind's annals has enjoyed so much 
leisure as our own. Our work is not hurting us. Work 
........................................... never hurts any one; rather it 

J | proves itself a wonderful pre- 

t work t sedative of health. But hurry, 

! never hurts | "the square of work," coupled with 
f ANY 0]VE * J worry, "its cube," will bring dis- 

| J aster, and that, too, quickly. Not 

i......-.......„....„....-.»^..„.„i ^ e man w j 1Q £ 0eg ^j ie mog { wor k ? 

but the man who needlessly hurries and worries over 
his duties is the man who suffers from insomnia, ennui, 
hypnochondria, nervous prostration, and who soon 
conies to the zenith of his serviceableness and as 
speedily descends in creative capacity to the nadir of 
enforced inactivity and perhaps of permanent disqual- 
ification from further performance in his chosen realm 
of service. He who works habitually under high pres- 
sure, which is another word for hurry, is doomed 
already to pay the penalty of enforced relaxation and 



126 The Making of Men 

at a time not of his own choosing, but when nature 
shall elect. And he who adds worry to performance 
under high pressure is committing suicide with acceler- 
ated pace. The apostle would as unequivocally 
condemn you for overwork as for slothfulness in your 
business. It is our duty, our privilege, as master 
builders of the edifice of life, to find the golden mean 
between overwork and underwork. 

Personally I do not think we have yet reached the 
maximum of human efficiency in business; the world's 
record for doing things has not yet been brought to its 
....„..,..........^.,................ highest point. It is true that the 

I f productive capacity of the race 

* human * h ag enormouslv multiplied in 

| EFFICIENCY J * ; T 

I to be | recent decades, but the high-water 

I marvelously | mar k nas not vet been reached. 

? INCREASED. J . J 

i i All our improvements practically 

*...............„......... 9 ......„.....a haye l)een in the | ine of mec hani ca l 

development. Our tools are a marvel and our machines 
surpass in their prodigious energy the fabled achieve- 
ments of the pagan deities. Wealth has multiplied and 
continues to multiply, but the end is not yet. We face 
an open door of great potentiality, of marvelous possi- 
bilities of increase in productive capacity. We are to 
witness marvels as great, greater as mind is greater 
than matter, in improved methods of applying human 
power of mind to the industrial and other problems of 
our complex and intricate social organism. Scientific 
management is a new phrase, but it contains a germ of 
portentous advancement for mankind. Its application 
to bricklaying has more than trebled the capacity of 
the master mason and left him with greater freshness 
and vigor when his day's work is done than his previous 



Life's Basic Principles 127 

output of one-third that amount had left him. Other 
and greater marvels from its mastery await us. Human 
efficiency in business is to be wonderfully increased 
in the coming generation and it behooves us to do our 
part as trained men and women, for only such can have 
a part in it, to be found laboring for its ushering in. 
The surest plan for us to adopt in order to render well 
our part in this new order of increased efficiency is to 
be "not slothful in business." 

An intensely practical question is that arising out 
of the demands of our business upon us. When does a 
man cease to be slothful in business? How assiduous 
........................................ should his attention and devotion 

I f to his vocational responsibilities 

| ! be? Is he to have only one inter- 

work— | es { i n life? These are engaging 

: THEN PRAY! ? 

I I queries and admit of much 

| f divergence of opinion. Experi- 

«..^.^.....^....„..........„....„,..i ence? however, seems to teach that 

too constant attention to one thing decreases efficiency 
in it and that the most successful men are those who 
master one line of work, become authority in it, and 
then have time for other interests. The old adage, 
"Work while you work and play while you play," 
while it is homely, is after all, as adequate a summing 
up of the world's matured judgment on this vital issue 
as can be formulated. If we employ our leisure 
moments in broadening our sympathies, if we steel 
ourselves during our working hours against hurry and 
at all time against worry, if we devote our vocational 
hours to work and not to dawdling, we shall meet 
with success the apostle's first requirement that we 
avoid slothfulness in our business, in our life's work. 



128 The Making of Men 

ii. enthusiasm in service 

"Fervent in spirit," says the sacred writer, and the 
spirit is not written with a capital letter. And he was 
right. Attention to business is not sufficient in itself. 
...-.^...„^....,..........,. # ...... Energy devoted to our vocation 

| may make us proficient in it, but 

I might brand us as failures in life. 

love * There must be whole-heartedness 

YOUR WORK. ? . 

T | in our service, else we might 

| J engage in a disgraceful, hurtful, 

i..... # ................,...^...........i disreputable sort of business. 

Unless you can be whole-hearted in the business you are 
engaged in, you had better get in another business — 
there is something wrong with it or with you in your 
relation to it. A business that is worthy of you will 
necessarily enlist all your sympathies, inspire your 
enthusiasm, beget your devotion, and impel perforce 
your consecration to its ends. Unless } t ou entertain 
such sentiments toward your life-work, it is unworthy 
of you or you are not adapted to it. It becomes a 
drudgery to you and your performance in it is at a 
discount of efficiency and effectiveness. You are a bore 
to yourself and the yoke of life galls you. But how the 
heart thrills when you meet a man who is happy in his 
work, whose whole-heartedness and singleness of devo- 
tion to his duty are apparent in every movement, 
eloquent in every utterance! I love to meet the 
enthusiastic, consecrated man who is so full of his life's 
work that he cannot refrain from "talking shop." I 
do not expect to engage in his line of work, though he 
is anxious ever to make me a disciple, but I get a zeal 
and an enthusiasm from associating with him that 



Life's Basic Principles 129 

qualifies me for better service in my own vocation. 
Believe in your work. Be enthusiastic over it. Feel 
that it is a great work, worthy of your best energy, 
beneficial to your fellows. Put energy into it, the best 
energy of soul at your command. Be fervent in your 
efforts to meet each responsibility ; be whole-hearted in 
your endeavor to achieve the very finest type of success, 
success that takes account of character as well as of 
mere acquisition and achievement. 

Don't think about promotion in your performance 
of duty — don't be visibly ambitious — don't be selfishly 
grasping. Be so absorbed in your work, so devoted to 
r ......,..,...............-....„...... ? your tasks, that you will be over- 

| I taken unawares, as it were, by 

| duty, not | promotion and crowned in spite of 
I sSould T be I yourself with success. Have the 
I the aim. I spirit in your work of the office 

I I boy in the great department store. 

A.......,....-............*..............* He wag always bug y and ever 

ready to do every chore that needed to be done whether 
it came in the specification of his contract with the firm 
or not. The proprietor noticed him and expected he 
would ask for an advance in wages. Six months passed 
and still no request for larger remuneration. The 
puzzled proprietor finally ventured to ask why he had 
made no overtures in the direction of receiving more 
adequate returns for his labor. "Well," replied the boy, 
"I suppose I ought to have mentioned it to you since 
you have called my attention to it, but really I was too 
busy to think of it." Are you surprised to be told that 
this boy later became a partner in the business 
and that he now ranks second only to the organizer 
of the business himself? Robert E. Lee said that "duty 



130 The Making of Men 

is the sublimest word in the English language," and he 
might have added with equal truthfulness that "the 
whole-hearted performance of duty is the sublimest 
thought-group of the secular type of which our mother- 
tongue is capable." Pay attention to your business, 
whatever it may be; give heed to it, and perform every 
act germane to it with singleness of devotion and 
whole-souled consecration of heart, energetically, 
enthusiastically, with fervency of spirit. 

III. DEDICATION TO GOD 

Not only "not slothful in business," not only "fervent 
in spirit," but finally, grandly, majestically, "serving 
the Lord." Without that concluding qualification, our 
.„..........„.„,.........^„.......... passage might just as well have 

f | been written by Orison Swett 

| I Marden as by the great apostle to 

I SEEK first t the Gentiles. Attention to busi- 

t THINGS FIRST. ? ,, . , *, , , 

I ; ness is all right. Whole-hearted 

I iF-r- r- i . ;i I ° 

| i performance of duty is better. 

*..*....•................................* pj u £ ne j^| ier f these nor both of 

them together would be safe constituents for a life- 
policy, worthy planks in the platform of living for 
Christian men, without the third and concluding prin- 
ciple of conduct contained in the inspired admonition, 
"serving the Lord." It took an inspired writer to add 
that touch, but the heart readily assents. No life is 
complete without God. No life is a success without 
attention to spiritual interests, which are the most 
vital interests of life. 

No men have ever yet been found devoid of the 
religious sense. The most degraded savages, so ignorant 
that many animals seem clever in comparison with 



Life's Basic Principles 131 

them, have yet a sense of dependence upon a power 
higher than themselves and a philosophy of how it is 
possible to please that power. The belief in God is 

. . . . . . ..... universal, and in the religious 

f f disposition found in every human 

t man t De i n g the brotherhood of man and 

| the religious J the fatherhood of God are indubi- 
| | tably established. The irreligious 

| { man is the abnormal man. The 

c..*..,.,,..^.....,..,..^...^...^ infidel ig a S pi r itual monstrosity. 

The agnostic is a spiritual aberration from the type 
of being created in the likeness of God. The normal 
man is the man of faith, and the larger the man, the 
more abiding his faith. Man is incurably religious — so 
says the latest word of science. It is no sign of weakness 
to love God. Kather is it the manly, the courageous, 
the heroic thing to do. 

I would not essay to discourse upon the value of 
religion, how that, through the inspiration emanating 
from it and the soul renewal so characteristic of it, the 
r ....„..............^........„...^.. world's progress is everywhere 

| | accelerated in direct proportion 

t religion • as religion is exalted. We all 
f aids I know the inward satisfaction of 

j pr °gress. J the religioug life? the pure j oy of 

I | the secret testimony within that 

a......................,.....,-^...,-* we are £ 0( j' g children. Such a 

consciousness is ballast on the billow-tossed voyage of 
life, bringing with it, amid trials, amid hardships, amid 
tribulations, amid successes, amid reverses, a peace that 
passeth all understanding — a peace incapable of under- 
standing, but in experience how blessed ! 

Many otherwise laudable lives have a fatal weakness 



132 The Making op Men 

here — they lack spiritual power, soul-force. There are 
men who give strict attention to business, who render 
whole-souled service in their vocation, and yet fall 
short of real greatness in achievement and enduring 
......................................... attainment in success, because 

f £ their successes and achievements 

t soul-force t are self-centered. No self-centered 
| is life's f life may be properly regarded as 
| REAL POWER - f thoroughly successful. In order 
I I to reach the high -mark in living 

i.....,.,.......,..,.--.......-^..-* our attention to business and our 

whole-heartedness in service must be dedicated to God. 
The spiritual must control us, if we are to be truly 
human, for the best part of man is the spirit within 
him. Dedication to God means devotion to the interests 
of our fellow man, for no man can love God and hate 
his neighbor. It should be the purpose of our life to be 
attentive to our business, our vocation, fervent in the 
performance of every task confronting us, and dedi- 
cated, with every power of body, mind, and spirit to 
the service of God and fellow man. We should so live 
that through the daily performance of our vocational 
duties whole-heartedly, fervently, we may draw our 
fellows to Christ, the magnet He that never fails to 
transmit a new power into whosoever is touched there- 
with. The life that embraces as its basic principles such 
a trinity of virtuous aims, with conscientious adher- 
ence thereto, under God, is destined to come to real 
greatness and to a crown imperishable, incorruptible. 



CHAPTER TEN 



THE USE OF TALENT 



1 Timothy 4' lh — "Neglect not the gift that is in 
thee." 



A MESSAGE to young people on the threshold of 
life is always interesting. Such a message the 
great Apostle to the Gentiles gave in the words 
of our text. The young man to receive them was 
Timothy, brought up in a devout family and dedicated 
.-.„.-«„.».~....„.„.„.„.-..m... ? to a great work. You have come 
f I from similar home surroundings 

f I and are embarking upon what 

? a threshold j forebodes to be, what ought to be, 
f j a great work. The apostle's in- 

| f junction is therefore apropos to 

4..^^.^^...^.^....^..^.^„i y 0u ^is morning as well as to 

Timothy in the first century of our era. 

"Neglect not the gift that is in thee" — words easily 
.........„....„....-...,^....^... spoken, but words requiring great 

f f effort to fulfil. The Bible fails to 

? | record a single injunction to lazi- 

I work, but j nesg to slothfulness. We are com- 

? NOT ALWAYS. | 

| i manded to remember the Sabbath 

| f day to keep it holy, but we are 

i^..^...^^........™.-.-^.^..* a | gQ en j i ne( j to work six days 

and in them do all our work. It is as much a sin to 
waste the six work days of the week as it is to break 



134 The Making of Men 

the Sabbath. Experience seems undoubtedly to show 
that those who do faithful work for six days will not 
need to use the seventh for any unchristian end. The 
man in college who cannot find time on Sunday to serve 
God, but must violate God's law by studying his lessons 
for Monday, is almost without exception the man who 
idles away most of his six days for legitimate work. 

"Neglect not the gift that is in thee" — but how? 
There are two ways of not neglecting your gift. The 
first is the simpler and the easier— and the one most 
........................................... often resorted to. It consists in 

| I mere use, mere employment of our 

I mere use op I gift. A man inherits from his 

? TALENT NOT f ° ,, , . . , , „ 

I worthy ! father a certain tract of land. He 
of the f uses jt to support himself and his 

! MODERN MAN. f . „ ^ , , , 

| I family — a far more commendable 

;............^......,...........„.....a t hi n g this than to allow it to 

grow up in weeds and briars. A man has a natural 
gift in mechanics. He gets a place and goes to work, 
securing a livelihood. Another man's gift lies in 
public speech. He accordingly preaches and does some 
good, but not all he is capable of. There are gifts as 
various as there are men in number, and most men are 
inclined to use their individual gift — a most laudable 
inclination — but I declare unto you a more excellent way. 
That more excellent way is to develop and use. No 
matter in what line your gift may lie, you should 
develop it and use it. I commend the man who uses his 
gift, but I commend him more who develops and uses 
his talent. That man who is incapable of developing 
his talent has his life cast in a small mold and deserves 
our sympathy, and we should rejoice that his kind are 
rapidly decreasing. I do not know that there need 



The Use of Talent 135 

ever be any more of his kind, in view of the vast oppor- 
tunities of education in the reach of even the poorest. 
The door of opportunity, of development, is closed to no 
? .,..................„.^............. man to-day who is willing to pay 

• I the price of development. An in- 

| develop your j creasing number of young people 
talent: | are knocking at the doors of our 
| then use. i colleges, anxious to contribute in 
t | any honorable way possible toward 

i-...^^.-*...........-.........* a e f rav i n g their expenses, and this 

is a hopeful sign of the times.* May their kind multi- 
ply! But worthy of all condemnation is the man who 
will not avail himself of the opportunity within his 
grasp for development. Develop your gift ; — then use it 
— that is the proper meaning of Paul's injunction. 

When we have developed our gift, we are much 
more capable of rendering efficient service in our voca- 
tion. The most successful men are those who develop 
j^-^^**-**^**^, their gift before using it practi- 
f j cally. Statistics show that the 

I and this * vas ^ ma J or ity of the most success- 
| development | ful men of this age are college 
I PAYS GRANDLY - | graduates and many of the other 
| I great ones have had some college 

i..........,o...... ••..•••£ training. Does education pay? 

Does development pay? Facts are eloquent in forcing 
an affirmative response. A man's earning capacity is 
multiplied many times by his developed talent and his 
chances of enduring success are immeasurably increased. 
The recognition accorded him — a goal that can be reached 



* For a list of such men and women who have come to greatness, 
see a hook by C. B. Riddle, "College Men Without Money." Thos. Y. 
Crowell Co., New York. 



136 The Making of Men 

only through, development — is an unearned increment 
that lends an ineffable flavor to living and renders life 
worth while. His developed talent properly used, will 
make a man a leader who would otherwise have been a 
follower all his days. How do the leaders of men differ 
from their fellows? Not so much in talent nor in its 
mere employment, but in the use of developed gifts. En- 
ergy is good, but it is better to use some of that energy to 
develop your talent for larger, more effective service. 

But there are two methods of development — narrow 
and broad, short-sighted and far-sighted. Narrow 
development produces a narrow man. A narrow man 
•^.^....^.^..^.^.^ is incapable of broad vision, of 
| | sympathy with life in the large, 

1 AVOID NARROW J ^ What the WOrM needS IS 

development: ? intelligent sympathy along with 
| it cripples. I mogt competent judgment. There 

| | is a tendency in our time to 

i..**...-^...^.........-**..* 0DServe the infant from its birth 

to discover, if possible, the peculiar bent of its make-up 
and to turn every particle of its training in that 
direction. This tendency T deplore — it is making us 
deplorably and crassly materialistic and rendering us 
increasingly more incapable of producing anything 
great in the intellectual and spiritual sense. A nation's 
contribution to noumenal and spiritual conceptions 
constitutes its fund of greatness, not its wealth, not its 
pyramids, not its roads, not its skyscrapers, not its 
navies. The builders of the pyramids of Egypt and the 
road engineers of Rome are forgotten, but the discov- 
erers of new ideals of life and thought and conduct, 
their contemporaries, are household words in every 
land to-day. 



! 



The Use of Talent 137 

Do not understand that I am condemning wealth. 
A country in which there is no wealth has never been 
able to leave a definite impress on the world. I believe 
c......................................... i n wealth. I believe it is the duty 

f t of some men to make monev, to 

• • «/ 7 

I DON'T LIMIT f beCOme rich ' Alld l haVe n0 d0UDt 

t life's joys to J that I now speak to some who 

J MONEY-MAKING! i wm ^ ^ be mil li naireS, or 

| who will miss their calling. I 
i~— —„*—„*„— —~*~*-...^i Relieve it is as much a sin for some 
people to be poor as for some others, who achieved 
their end by dishonest means, to be rich. Some are 
called to be rich, their gift lies that way, and they 
will be sinners against God's purpose for them, if they 
fail to become rich. But God has not called all to 
riches. I am inclined to think He likes poor folks 
better, since He made so many of them. And those who 
have the gift to make money need, not the narrow, but 
the broad, development, if they are to enjoy the fruits 
of their industry in life's eventide. Pity the rich man 
whose narrow application to money-making has made 
him a pauper in every other respect. 

Nor would I be understood as opposing speciali- 
,.,.„......,...,................,........ f zation. We need specialists, but 

f don't be a t we do not need narrow specialists. 
| muck-raker— | a successful phvsician said to me 

? HAVE : 

| educational I recently that he believed that 
f perspective I medical specialists did a great 

TO YOUR * , , . 

! training. | deal of good, but often a great 
i... ,.,.,..,... ■...,..,....,■...; deal of harm. "But how do you 

explain that?" I asked. "Very easily," came the 
prompt response. "The specialist views every organ 
of the body from the standpoint of his specialty. He 



138 The Making of Men 

frequently treats symptoms, and in getting his special 
organ in good shape will derange the system in many 
other parts. Frequently a deranged special organ has 
a deep-seated cause, which when removed will set the 
special organ all right again. In these cases special- 
ism does harm." The harm is not in specialism, but 
in its narrowness. A man who knows only one thing 
cannot know it perfectly, because perfect knowledge 
takes the particular element's relations to other things 
into consideration. The narrow specialist cannot see 
the rose for its petals; nor the forest for its tree; nor 
the heavens for the stars. He is incapable of per- 
spective, and no life, just as no picture, can be com- 
plete without perspective. The picture of the man 
with the muck-rake in Pilgrim's Progress is an apt 
portraiture of the man who can do only one thing, who 
knows only one thing. Know your specialty; be the 
best informed man in your line; be second to none in 
definite, accurate mastery of your vocation — but do 
not stop there, rather do not begin there. 

The man who makes his specialty count for most is 
the man who arrives at the station of thorough mas- 
tery in his vocation through the road that touches life 
....................................... and knowledge in all their phases. 

f | He does not take the underground 

! don't try I tunnel, but God's open country. 

? EDUCATION AL I « , . f, ,. , -, 

! short-cuts— ! Such a man is sympathetic, broad- 
there are ? minded, sees things in proportion, 

NONE. I ,.,,-■,? • +• 

i and is destined by conscientious 
.................,.....i p er f ormance an a strict adherence 

to duty to rise to highest attainment in his special line. 
This brings us to the consideration of one of the most 
vital questions in life — what is the proper time to 



The Use of Talent 139 

make special preparation for one's special work? Many 
think as soon as they can read and write, they should 
begin at once to specialize, and there are special schools 
which for the paltry consideration of the added dollars 
it will bring them stand ready to decoy unwitting 
youths into putting that belief into practice with them. 
They will promise glowing prospects for wealth- 
production after six months in their school. Every- 
body knows that six months is not time enough to 
develop a man into anything but — a squash. It takes 
time to make an oak, but a sapling can come forth in 
a brief summer. There are no short-cuts to life-prepa- 
ration. God has ordained that the development of the 
higher orders of His creation should be slow, but mush- 
rooms grow up over night. Not how long it will take 
me to get ready for my calling, but what does it require 
for me to become thoroughly proficient in it, should be 
uppermost in every young man's mind, in every young 
woman's mind. We are not designed so much to make a 
living as we are to live a life. The world does not owe 
me a living, but I owe the world to live a life worthy of 
my gifts, uplifting to my fellows, and so adequate in 
assisting in the world's progress and elevation. 

Others feel that, when the high school course is 
......................................... completed, we are then ready for 

f f the special or technical school. 

I don't stand * They do not see any need for the 

* THE2 * 

! educational I college— the literary college, and 
I pyramid on | regard the four years spent therein 

J ITS APEX! | ° ■ . „„ f ,, , . 

| 1 as wasted time. What a blunder! 

*......„........................„......* We need a foundation before we 

erect our house. To build the roof first would display 
gross ignorance of the builder's art. It is equally as 



140 The Making of Men 

disastrous in life-preparation to begin with the end. 
The end of life-preparation is mastery of our specialty. 
To begin with it first is to stand a pyramid on its apex 
— it may stand poised in mid-air, an ungainly spectacle 
and quite different from its maker's design, but the 
chances are that it will topple over. The college 
furnishes that broad, thorough, stable foundation that 
is so fundamentally needful in order to keep our 
specialty from narrowing us and emptying us of all 
capacity for sympathetic communion with our fellows 
and from contributing our due proportion of service 
to the world's uplift. We need special and technical 
schools and must have them, but they do not propose 
to give a broad foundation to life and should not be 
sought till our college course, which undertakes this 
very thing, has been completed. It takes a long time to 
graduate from college and then spend three or four 
years in the special and technical schools, but the 
experience of all who have done it is so satisfactory 
that no sacrifice possible needful to this end should be 
begrudged by the young person who aims at the ripest 
fruitage to his life's endeavor. The special and tech- 
nical school should follow the college and cannot be 
thought of by discriminating educators as capable of 
taking its place. 

But where shall we lay our foundation ? What sort 
of college shall we choose? A state college? A pri- 
vately endowed or owned institution? Or a Christian 
college? To raise this question is to answer it. Why 
have you chosen a Christian college rather than some 
other college? It is because you value Christian 
character above intellectuality and consider it the most 
priceless possession in the world. State institutions 



The Use of Talent 141 

cannot emphasize the religious life. The state and the 
Church are to be kept forever separate in this country. 
Privately endowed or privately owned institutions are 

not necessarilv irreligious, but 

\ they frequently are, and many are 

choose f f as t becoming sporting resorts 

? CAREFULLY : . 

I the place of % where habits of lavishness and 
| your talent- | high-living are inculcated or at 

: DEVELOPMENT. | 

% least imbibed. But the college, 
i..... e . e .. e .....,.....o..-. 8 ........^i which ig thoroughly Christian 

though free from all sectarianism, the college where 
every possible effort is put forth to create a wholesome, 
heathful, inspiring Christian atmosphere, is certainly 
the proper scene for the unfolding into flower and the 
ripening into fruit of Christian character. The spirit 
of the college you attend in the formative period of 
life, wherein decisions affecting the attitude toward the 
things of the spirit are unconsciously arrived at, 
cannot but have a tremendous influence in shaping 
your life's ideals and principles. The atmosphere of 
the genuinely Christian college has saved to the world, 
to the Church, and to himself many a promising youth, 
who under different environment would have gone 
down in dissipation to an untimely death. Your state 
college should be for those who are maturely developed 
in character, for those whose standards of conduct are 
so determined that looseness in moral life, laxness in 
Christian living, and insidious temptations of every* 
kind can exert no compelling attraction for them. We 
run too large a risk, an irreparable risk too, in seeking 
our foundational development, while yet immature, in 
anv other than a distinctlv Christian environment. 



• WHOSE ARE 
f OUR TALENTS? 



142 The Making of Men 

What shall we do with our developed gift? To what 

purpose shall we make it subservient? Is it ours, to 

do as we please with it? Or do our fellow men have an 

interest or a residuary right in it ? 

There are those who regard their 

gift as their personal property. 

They use it to advance their own 

interests: nay, they use it to 

thwart the progress of their fel- 
^.•.....•-•..•..^..-.........•......-a lowg Tlie wor i<j W ould be better 

off without such men. They are an insult to human- 
kind. Jacob-like, they would even in their prayers 
make a bargain with God. They do right because the 
law requires them to, and if there is any way to violate 
the spirit of the law by taking refuge in its letter, or 
if it will cost less to violate it than the profit accruing 
from its violation will yield, they are ready, anxious, 
keen-scented to violate it. They keep lawyers, as 
honorable as they are, to teach them how to do wrong 
without incurring the penalties of such wrong-doing. 
They regard their fellow man as the legitimate object 
of their prey and the public exchequer as a private dis- 
pensary to be looted at will. The proper place for such 
men is the penitentiary and the advent of college- 
trained men of Christian character into public life will 
place them there or lead to their abandonment of these 
nefarious practices. 

Other men take the entirely opposite view of their 
proprietary right in their gift and the fruits of it. They 
do not regard themselves as proprietors at all, but as 
trustees. Their fellow men are, as they see it, the 
rightful owners of their gift and of its fruitage. They 
regard themselves as entitled to the income of the 



The Use of Talent 143 

exercise of their gift sufficient to maintain themselves 
in comfort, but beyond this their right ceases. This 
was Christ's view of His life on earth — it was to benefit 
r ..............................„...... ? His fellow men. It is the view of 

f I His followers to-day. Here is a 

f we are f man wn0 can make money. He 

? TRUSTEES, NOT ? . . 

| proprietors, | lives in comfort, gives employment 
| op our f { man y accumulates property, 

? TALENTS. | ., J ' . F * J ' 

| I provides for his family, gives liber- 

4.....^.^..«......^.,- # ......~,»,~a a jjy £ Q ever y C a U se, and uses his 

wealth to advance the Kingdom among men. A farmer, 
a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, a teacher, a minister, 
all do likewise. The Kingdom flourishes. Their souls 
also flourish. It is a benediction to be in their pres- 
ence. The very atmosphere they breathe lends inspira- 
tion to others. The Christian graces have their 
completest representation in a life like this and 
Christian education, through its richest product, 
Christian character, contributes powerfully to this sort 
of life. Herein are Christian colleges justified and 
herein do they render service most effectual and 
enduring. 

But what should be my attitude toward the gifts of 
others? It should not be that of the egotist. I should 
............................„.^....... not regard my gift as the greatest 

? I gift in the world and consider all 

| cultivate ? other gifts as inferior to it. Nor 

? APPRECIATION ? 

I or others' | should I be jealous of my fellow 
I talents— it's f man 's gift. If he is more gifted 

f YOUR DUTY. ;• _ ° ° . 

| i than I, if he has developed his 

a..,......................................* g.^ more completely than I have 

developed mine, if he has used his gift after develop- 
ment to greater and better advantage than I have used 



144 The Making op Men 

mine, that is no reason why he should incur my enmity, 
but rather does it entitle him to my praise, and if I 
live by the golden rule he will have it. Our attitude 
toward the gifts of others should be that of sympa- 
thetic co-operation and sincere appreciation. We are 
members one of another and our interests throughout 
are identical. Our gifts are ours by virtue of the 
generous bounty of the same Father, and as brothers 
and sisters in the great household of God we should 
live harmoniously, sympathetically, helpfully, and 
appreciatively with reference to each other's gifts, 
remembering that we are all one body in Christ, but 
members in particular. 

A concluding thought full of comfort is the consid- 
eration that every man has at least two gifts — the one 
earthly, the other heavenly — the one secular, the other 
spiritual. God has given us a 
gift, a talent, whereby we may 
secure for ourselves the means of 
subsistence and perhaps of inde- 
pendence. We have seen how we 
I | should develop and use this gift 

i..^^*.^*^..*.*.-^ nQt gejfighiy wholly, but altruistic- 
ally, for the uplift of life and ideals round-about us. 
God has also given us a spiritual gift and this too 
should be developed and used. This gift is as much 
more important than our earthly gift as Heaven is 
more important than earth. He who neglects his 
earthly gift is a sluggard — but he who neglects his 
spiritual gift is a fool. Pity him. The greatest man of 
all, the most successful man of all, is the man who 
makes his earthly gift contribute to the development of 
his spiritual gift also. What doth it profit a man, asked 



f 

f BUT OUR SOUL 

i TALENT IS OUR 

? BEST TALENT — 

[ CULTIVATE IT! 



The Use of Talent 145 

the Lord Jesus, to gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul ? The wise man will gain the world and gain 
it in such way that it will contribute to his growth in 
soul-power, his enlargement in spiritual force. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 



THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF COLLEGE LIFE 



Joshua 3:4— "Ye have not passed this way here- 
tofore." 



THE class of 1914 has attained a worthy ambition, 
an ambition first entertained four years ago and 
wrought out in anxious joy and sweet fellowship 
during the intervening days and months. To-day each 
member of this class enters upon a new responsibility 
amid strange surroundings, but he enters upon it as 
.-,-.-.„.„.„.„..,.,■....■.,.,....„. one of a marked and favored 
| | section of our people, looked to by 

I the peculiar ? all with large expectation of great 

POSITION 

| of the I serace — an expectation resting on 
I college man. | a sure foundation. One of each 
I J six hundred of our population 

toge*m******a*m~*&#* enters college: one in about 
twenty-five hundred graduates from college. If college 
education means anything, the fortunate men and 
women who have achieved it certainly have a tre- 
mendous lead in the race of life. 

And we know from experience that they do have 
this advantage and that they hold it. The few great 
men, who, like Lincoln, mount to greatness without 
college education, by their very fewness, establish 
beyond doubt the universality of the principle. Their 
examples can inspire us to do our best, but we cannot 



CENTER IN 
HIM. 



148 The MxVKing of Men 

afford to emulate their lack of education because we 
cannot be sure we are as richly endowed as they, and, 
if we were sure of it, education would help us to 
achieve greater things and good 
judgment would suggest that we 
large * avail ourselves of it. When we 

EXPECTATIONS f . ,, 

rightly i consider that the outstanding 
great names of American history, 
| past and present, represent the 
colleges of the land either as full 
graduates or as those who dropped out, we begin to 
understand the real meaning of the commencement 
occasion and to appreciate why the people generally 
take such deep concern in it. They know and so do 
we that the college graduates are the destined leaders 
of the nation and that our country's hope centers in 
them. The college graduates hold in their hands the 
key of our future national prosperity and to them our 
eyes anxiously turn with hope and confidence. 

But why ? What does the college curriculum do for 
a man that his chances of leadership and usefulness 
are so enormously multiplied ? Is he not the same man 
at the termination of the course 
f as at the beginning? If not, what 
I has produced the difference, for 



WHAT COLLEGE 



should do f he looks much the same? This is 



FOR A MAN. 






| an engaging theme, one that has 
! been discussed on many occasions, 
and with much disagreement 
among the doctors. The best that can be done under 
such circumstances is to give expression to one's own 
faith, based on experience and observation. Judged by 
this norm, the college course fits a man for leadership 



The Contributions of College Life 149 

in life's work by giving his life perspective, by enlarging 
the horizon of his vision, by cultivating proper habits 
of work and thought, by revealing correct notions of 
God and things divine, the whole resulting in that finest 
of noble developments — Christian character. 

We have the same need for perspective in life as in 
art — for life is art, art in its highest, holiest form. 
The Egyptian educational system did not yield this 
■„.,».,.,..,.„.,..,,.,.„.„.„. exquisite product, else Moses had 
f | not made such a failure of his first 

I a fine sense f effort to help his enslaved breth- 

l PERSPECTIVE * Pen * The f0H - V ^ earS S P eilt ^ th(3 

I given, I land of Midian corrected the 

J f defect and he became in conse- 

•......-.............„.......„•........* q Uence the greatest law-giver of 

history. The college curriculum is made up of lan- 
guages, sciences, mathematics, history, and philosophy, 
and these coloring the life by imperceptible gradations 
yield a perspective that gives a beautiful symmetry and 
sanity to every act or judgment. We may not be able 
to detect the manner in which the result is achieved, 
but its achievement we cannot doubt. In the study of 
languages and literature, the college man not only 
comes in contact with noble thoughts couched in pow- 
erful phrase, but he lives life under all the conditions 
that try men's souls. His experience is thus many 
times enlarged and he is given a scale by which to 
weigh the consequences of any proposed line of conduct 
or system of human uplift. Sciences of the natural 
order not only bring him face to face with the facts 
of the visible creation, but with the invisible Creator of 
the world and enable him to think God's thoughts after 
Him. The man who studies natural science under a 



150 The Making of Men 

proper teacher and does not become more devout of 
heart and consecrated of life must be dull and unre- 
sponsive indeed. Sciences of the social order introduce 
him to all the experimentations of the race in its long, 
hard struggle for justice and righteousness and peace 
in political life and equip him with the most reliable 
weapons of successful warfare against quack political 
nostrums and the social panaceas so plentifully pro- 
posed by demagogues and charlatans and by which 
noble-hearted men with less clarified perspective are 
easily lured into hurtful schemes of political and 
social chicanery. Mathematics train him to exactness 
of thinking and to look for definite results from com- 
position of definite forces. The man who knows his 
geometry and calculus will not be easily misled in any 
crisis, however trying it may be. History has shown 
him the passions of men in all relationships and 
enabled him to forecast the future in terms of the past. 
Philosophy has opened up to him the entrancing vistas 
of men's hopes, and he who has strolled through its 
glimmering labyrinth cannot be other than a nobler 
man for his experience. The college curriculum there- 
fore is seen to be a sane attempt, largely successful in 
thousands of cases, to bring the experience of the 
world's past to bear with all its lessons of uplift and 
caution upon the college student's present, so as to give 
him a firm grasp on life in its noblest aspects and to 
restrain him from being swept along in the current of 
every silly scheme for the cure of its ills — what we may 
with all justice describe as a true perspective for life 
and its duties. 

Such a perspective is good, is necessary, but without 
vision it is powerless to result in noble achievement. 



The Contributions of College Life 151 

We need men in these times who not only have a proper 
perspective of life, but who have equally a clarified 
vision of the work that needs to be done in the world 
around us. We have not achieved 
| the millennium jet 7 and we shall 
and a | never achieve it till college men 

isioifop I £ et the vision of their MI P riT * 
duty. J ilege in working for its ushering 

} in and of their joyous duty to 
measure up adequately to their 
privilege. Surely a man cannot study the noble litera- 
ture of the world without getting a vision of a work 
to be done. Nor can he delve into the mysteries of 
God's universe as they are embodied in the great 
natural sciences without feeling forces pulling at his 
heart to lend a helping hand toward the accomplish- 
ment of the world's redemption. And the methods by 
which it is to be wrought out— surely social science 
and history and mathematics and philosophy will point 
them out to him. That college men do get this vision 
is abundantly evidenced by the ameliorative work for 
human betterment they are always devotedly engaged 
in. They have led every real reform and have given 
life itself for the uplift of their fellows. It is true that 
not all college men get this vision, but enough of them 
get it to insure the world's progress and to justify the 
friends of colleges in their sacrifices for them, and 
charity would compel us to judge the college and its 
work by its best product and not altogether by its 
failure, and especially so when the best work is so 
greatly in the ascendency. Many a man has been lifted 
out of narrowness and bigotry and selfishness by the 
liberalizing power of the college curriculum and given 



152 The Making of Men 

such a vision of duty that he became a benefactor of his 
race. There is no room for petty selfishness in the face 
of the vision of human need as the college course lays 
it bare and points the way to its satisfaction at the 
hands of men prepared to render efficient service. 

The college curriculum also fits for large place in 
life by equipping those who honestly pursue it with 
correct habits of work and thought. A man may be as 
t . .,..„.,..,..„.„. «....,..,.,..,..,. t wi se as Solomon and yet make of 
I life a bungle, because he does not 

along with | know how to work at a thing con- 

CORRECT 

habits of I secutively, systematically, unre- 
work and I lentinglv. The insistence of the 

THOUGHT. | „ to " 

| college that students do consecu- 
■**-•"•"•"■■•■•"* tive and systematic work from 
day to day makes powerfully for the development of 
proper habits. The college regulations, inconvenient at 
times, are the very finest seminaries of conduct. Men 
who do the world's work must learn sooner or later to 
respect and reverence authority and to be punctual in 
the discharge of every duty, whether it is pleasant or 
not. Students in college should purposely seek some 
course that is hard and unpleasant for them — it yields 
the very best sort of discipline of the will. The work of 
the work-a-day world is not all sugar-coated, and, if 
the college course is, it is in that respect not a complete 
preparation for life. Herein lies a weakness of our 
modern elective system, if it encourages men to elect 
only those courses that are agreeable because of their 
agreeableness. I know that many philosophers and 
educationists will not agree with this position, but 
experience teaches that he who can do the things he 
would rather not do is the man who will one day wake 



The Contributions op College Life 153 

up to find himself famous. It is no accident that Paul's 
exhortation to "endure hardness" was given to a young 
man, and college men who refuse to "endure hardness" 
in their college days will be second vice-presidents or 
third assistant-secretaries in the counsels of mankind 
when their days of preparation are passed. Nor does 
the world have use in any large way for the unpunctual 
man. He cannot be relied on and reliance is necessary 
in every department of human endeavor. Nor will it 
make any difference that the lack of punctuality is due 
to poor health. The world will sympathize with the 
sick man, but it cannot promote him: its work must 
be done. Let college men everywhere consider that the 
habits of faithful work, of punctual discharge of every 
duty, of whole-hearted attention to disagreeable tasks, 
of joyous submission to the powers that be, will follow 
them into life and will prove assets of inestimable 
value in its working capital. And let every college 
man who treats these considerations lightly, thinking 
he will correct them when he has graduated, grimly 
acknowledge that he cannot lay these habits aside, but 
that they will be the warp and woof of his character 
and the fetters of his bondage to mediocrity. The man 
who graduates without the cultivation of correct habits 
of work and thought, without the acquisition of the 
best methods of grasping the problems of life, does so 
because he sets himself against them and not because 
of any incapacity on the part of the college to give 
him these needful elements of life equipment. 

But men may have a noble perspective of life, an 
entrancing vision of its needs, correct methods of work 
and thought, and yet be disqualified to lead the world 
to righteousness, or even to assist in redeeming man- 



IN THE HEART. 



154 The Making of Men 

kind, because their hearts are wrong. It is the duty 
of the college curriculum to give a man correct notions 
of God and an abiding interest in the spiritual life. It 
t . ........... ^ is impossible to go through college 

f | and not get some sort of notion of 

J but god must j God > Dut that notion should be 
be enthroned f correct and not distorted. The 

college that fails in this respect 
has failed beyond redemption, — 
not that it is to be sectarian, not 
that, but that it is unworthy of confidence and unde- 
serving of support if it does not do its best to make 
plain the place in human life and society of the King- 
dom of God and the individual's duty to love and serve 
Him. It is said that there are colleges in this Chris- 
tian land from which a man can graduate with no more 
conception of the true God than if he had been educated 
in a pagan country.* This is a deplorable condition and 
one that strikes at the heart of education. It must be 
remedied and it will be, because the American people 
will see to it that such abuse of education is not toler- 
ated. We live in times when free-thought, infidelity, 
and skepticism are tolerated in the public 
school system, but when Christianity cannot be. 
It is a perilous condition, but the day of 
redemption is at hand. The cry is rising up from 
every quarter and the popular voice shall be heard and 
heeded. Church and state are not to unite again, but 



* Dr. W. O. Thompson, President of Ohio State University, says : 
"The atmosphere in which a boy is educated counts for much. I am 
in no way untrue to state institutions when I say that in our day 
a boy might become a bachelor or a master in almost any one of the 
best of them and be as ignorant of the Bible, the moral and spiritual 
truth which it represents and the fundamental principles of religion, 
their nature and value to society, as if he had been educated in a non- 
Christian country." 



The Contributions of College Life 155 

our educational system shall not be deprived of its 
heart's blood by eliminating therefrom the great central 
fact of human history and progress — the God that 
makes it possible. We have learned that "knowledge 
puffeth up." Strange that we had not already known 
it. We are learning that there is no good education, 
except education in goodness, and that there can be no 
right training except it be training in righteousness, 
and that apart from God neither goodness nor right- 
eousness is possible. The folly of allowing children to 
read in their school-books the moral maxims of Marcus 
Aurelius and Epictetus and Confucius and Mohammed, 
and of excluding therefrom Paul's pa3an to love and 
the Sermon on the Mount ! The folly of it ! May God 
graciously pardon us and may He help us to under- 
stand that knowledge is power, but that it is power for 
harm rather than for good, unless His spirit shall 
control it to good and righteous ends ! 

So far we have considered what the college should 
do for its students. Our investigation has made clear 
the tremendous import of college education and indi- 
' cated how those who happily pos- 
f sess themselves of it are qualified 
| for posts of leadership in the 
I contribution | world. But our inquiry shall not 

TO THEIR 

f college. I De complete until we have inverted 
I « it and asked what college men can 

i...,...., ,.,..,.•„•.•„•„, „„,.,....« ( j Q £ or ^ e CUTr j cu i um an( j f 0P the 

college that is to make the curriculum effective in their 
own and other lives. For be it remembered that a 
college course is not simply a matter of books and 
courses of study: it is this, but it is all the more a 
product of life, of the interaction of life on life, of 



STUDENTS 
ALSO MAKE 



156 The Making op Men 

spirit on spirit. There is no college but has its spirit 
and that spirit is as powerful a force molding character, 
determining ideals, equipping for life as the mastery 
of the curriculum. It is a composite product and every 
person in the college community contributes toward its 
making. There is no student but has his part in it, be 
it of uplift, or down-pull. There is no method of 
preventing his contribution to it save that of elimina- 
ting him — a painful necessity in some cases, but the 
door of opportunity to those left behind — the oppor- 
tunity of living in an unvitiated atmosphere and of 
adding to its exhilarating qualities day by day. The 
graduates of a college are remembered most gratefully, 
not because of their scholarship attainments, their 
forensic conquests, their athletic victories, their liberal 
gifts to Alma Mater — all these are good, all of them are 
necessary, but the chiefest thing for which each indi- 
vidual graduate is most gratefully remembered is the 
contribution of his four years to the spirit of his college, 
that indefinable atmosphere that like the halo of a 
beautiful sunset emanates from his life and becomes a 
part forever of the institution that travailed at his 
intellectual birth. What a privilege! It is not of 
earth, but of heaven, not of mortality, but of immortal- 
ity, to have part in the generation of a force like that, 
a force that shall influence those that come after us 
for right living and for God. 

This high privilege, this noble opportunity to help 
fashion the leaders of men, comes to every college man, 
to every college woman — but once. We have only one 
college course to run, and when it is run and our 
diploma is joyfully, proudly placed in our hands, it 
shall be said of us not only that we have not passed this 



The Contributions of College Life 157 

way before, but also that we shall not pass this way 
again. Our commencement day is a real commence- 
ment. From it we go out to take our places in the arena 
of the life for which our college days in a peculiar sense 
,.■.,■.,■.„.„.■■.„■.■■.■,..,.■■,■■.., have been a prophetic preparation. 
J t The future shall test our man- 

J the spirit of ! hood, our womanhood, our resist- 

EDTJCA/FIOTV 

I is m " • ance P ower > our initiative, our 

I their hands, f hopes. We shall need all that an 
| ideal college course can justly 
yield us in the fierce onslaught 
of life. Others will take our places in chapel, on the 
campus, in the dormitories, in the lecture halls, but we 
will not be forgotten in the sacred halls of Alma Mater. 
We cannot be there forgotten because our best life's 
product will be in the spirit we left behind us to fashion 
and mold and uplift other lives, when we passed out to 
sterner realities, but with sweet and precious memories. 



? 



CHAPTER TWELVE 



ACHIEVING MANHOOD'S GOAL 



Joshua 1:8 — "Then thou shalt have good success. 



SO uracil is said about success in our day that it has 
become fashionable in some places to berate it. 
It is pointed out for instance that success, as com- 
monly understood, is materialistic, many persons spell- 
ing it fucceff as if the only aim of life were to amass 
great wealth. Far be it from me to depreciate wealth, 
even great wealth; we must have 
men of vast fortune and colleges 
certainly cannot exist without 
but I them, but let us not consider that 

o success. J dolI a rg ma ke a man or constitute 
f the value of his life. The success 
Which teaches that they do fe 
unworthy of serious consideration and ought not even to 
be here suggested and would not be but for the fact 
that in some quarters such a veritable gospel of 
mammon is proclaimed as the Whole duty of man.* 



* For example, Russell H. Conwell's (in) famous lecture "Acres of 
Diamonds," respecting which a great religious editor writes : 

"Dr. Conwell's argument was this — that a man's worth is ever 
and always measured by the dollars he has made and saved. May the 
angels defend us ! Was Lord Christ measured by the dollars He saved? 
Was Paul? Was Martin Luther? Was Jonathan Edwards? Was 
John Wesley? These men lived humbly, wrought faithfully, blessed 
humanity, and benefited all mankind. Yet mankind estimated them to 
be worth less than ten thousand dollars, and by Dr. Conwell's own 
statement, the world paid them their full Worth, and since they were 
not worth more in money they should have been run out of their 



160 The Making of Men 

Others oppose success as selfish and therefore hostile to 
the Christian ideal of noble manhood. Certain apostles 
of modern success certainly write and act as if success 
and self-aggrandizement were synonyms, from which 
type of man may a kind Providence deliver us! Still 
others regret the wild clamor for success that is the 
chief characteristic of our time as being immoral or at 
least unmoral. A man, they allege, may purpose in his 
heart to murder his neighbor and carrying out his 
purpose becomes a success. They object, and rightly, 
to the glorification of a cause like that. In this con- 
nection it should be pointed out also that the word 
success occurs only once in the King James Version of 
the Bible and then it is qualified by the adjective good 
— good success, good success, that is what Joshua prom- 
ised the Israelites if they should obey the Lord. Their 
entire history and the world's history unto this good 
hour is a perpetual illustration that Joshua was right. 
I would not then encourage any college man or 
woman on the eve of graduation to strive for success, 
but for good success. We owe it 
to our day and generation to suc- 
ceed? No, not to succeed, but to 

AND AMBITION I , „ , . , 

for the I succeed well, to achieve good 
best gifts. f success, which without hesitation 
I f we may define as manhood's life- 

^.^.^•-^^......-►..^.-^.i g 0a j Q ne y iep ma tter seems to 

demand consideration here — the matter of ambition. 
We frequently hear it said of a man that he is 
ambitious. No man should feel complimented to have 

town. Ah, me ! If this is not the gospel of mammon, we have never 
heard it. And yet he said he had delivered this same lecture ten 
thousand times, and the people listened — and said it was great. If that 
was great, it was the greatness of eloquence in preaching the gospel 
of mammon." — Dr. J. O. Atkinson, in The Christian Sun. 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 161 

that adjective attached to his name or used as describing 
him. Neither this word nor the noun from which it 
is derived can he found in the Authorized Version of 
the Bible. It is a selfish motive and the Bible is set 
against selfishness. Ambition is ruthless, unless it is 
Christian in its aim. That suggests that there is a 
kind of ambition which is Christian. It is enjoined 
upon us in 1 Corinthians 12 : 31, where we are encour- 
aged to "covet earnestly the best gifts." Here the verb 
translated "covet earnestly" means "be ambitious for." 
That is the kind of ambition we need. But the sacred 
writer was shy even of it. He felt that it, too, might 
be selfish, uncharitable, unchristian, and so he adds 
later in the same verse, "and yet show I unto you a 
more excellent way," following which comes that 
exquisite passage, the paean to love, in which Paul shows 
that the possession of even the noblest Christian graces 
or gifts in supreme degree is of no profit to a man unless 
he is imbued with the essence of all true spirituality, 
love for his fellows and for God. 

And permit me to state at this point that the 
attainment of good success, the realization of the ambi- 
tion for the best gifts tempered with love, does not rest 
«„.....,..........................«...... on extraneous conditions. The 

| f social position of one's parents is 

I the attain- f no assurance that one will achieve 

: MENT OF THESE I .. T , ., -, , ,, . a j.- 1 

? not dependent ! it. Inherited wealth or influential 
I on extraneous f friends will not materially assist 

t CONDITIONS. « . ,- j. ,. ,. ,™ . « 

I | in that direction. The secret of 

^•-^-•.^-^•-.-•-•-•..•-a ^-j. achievement lies within each 
individual. The fact that you have a college degree will 
not guarantee to you real usefulness or greatness. 
Many with diplomas have fallen far short of this mark. 



162 The Making of Men 

Many without diplomas have reached it. We should 
never lose sight of the fact, however, that college train- 
ing does wonderfully assist in that direction. The 
statistics are eloquent and convincing touching this 
matter. The most reliable figures for the determina- 
tion of the value of college education, perhaps, are those 
given in "Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biogra- 
phy." Its six volumes give the life records of the most 
eminent Americans to date, 15,142 in all. Of these, 
5,326 were college graduates. It is estimated that up 
to the publication of this encyclopedia not more than 
200,000 persons had been graduated from American 
colleges. This means that one in forty of them achieved 
permanent greatness. During this same time not less 
than 100,000,000 persons * have lived and died in 
America. Of these, ten thousand achieved lasting re- 
nown, or one in ten thousand. What does this suggest? 
This — that college education multiplies a man's chance 
of achieving real greatness just two hundred and fifty 
fold. I congratulate any man who has been given this 
splendid boon or who has purchased it for himself, and 
then I would have him remember that thirty-nine out of 
every forty so blessed will fail to achieve the best suc- 
cess. His college education, I would remind him, is his 
opportunity and his challenge, but it does not guarantee 
him a through ticket with Pullman and dining-car 
accommodations to the grand central depot of man- 
hood's goal for life — good success. He must reach that 
station through his own efforts. 

Each man is the architect of his own fortune. His 
own efforts must yield him life's good success and bring 
him to manhood's goal of achievement. He is his own 

* "The American College." Thwing. Piatt and Peck, New York. 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 163 

fate. Let no man fault his circumstances or his 
friends for his failure in life. If he is a sane man and 
will direct his energies toward the acquisition of the 
elements of true success, he can 
assuredly mount the ladder of 
f their I greatness, rung by rung, and no 

I ACQUISITION ? & > „ -, . 

| requires | man can, no man will, desire, to 
| sanity f hi n( j er or impede his upward prog- 

■ THROUGHOUT. : ^ ^ r » 

i | ress. But what does it mean to be 

•......-^•-......^.^.^.^..-...•^ sane? Does it mean to have a 

sound mind ? That is a part only of complete sanity, a 
vital part, but only a part at best. Sanity in its 
relation to life-achievement means a man's harmonious 
development throughout all his faculties. His head 
must be sound and his mental faculties keen and alert. 
His appetites must be made serviceable to his life- 
purpose and not his life their slave. His heart must be 
right and in its right place. " If his head gets where his 
heart ought to be, he will be cold and hard and too 
stern to render best service to his fellows. If his heart 
gets into his head, he will be a crank, a fanatic, an 
emotional animal, capable of great feeling, but not a 
real man. If his appetites climb into his head or his 
heart, he will immediately become a beast. Brains, 
appetites, emotions — all of them are needful in the well- 
proportioned man, but all of them must be sane, kept in 
their proper place and relationship to each other. It is 
true that geniuses, supermen, sprint through the arena 
of life, defying every canon of normal manhood and 
leaving behind them a trail of greatness. But it is also 
true that geniuses are totally unaware of their genius, 
that they are very uncomfortable men to live with, that 
their life is usually a constant martyrdom, their 



1G4 The Making of Men 

funerals being sparsely attended and their claim to 
greatness acknowledged only by a later generation than 
their own. Some one has said that genius is a species 
of insanity, whose only asylum is the grave. Be that as 
it may, the man who really serves his time is the man 
of complete sanity, of splendid symmetry of life. 

Another characteristic of these servants of mankind 
is their healthfulness. Their bodies are vigorous and 
sound. No college has the right to graduate an unsound 
.,.„..,.„.„.„.„. . .,,.. „ „.,. man physically. That is why col- 
| | leges insist so strongly upon 

I with | physical culture, daily exercise, 

? COMPLETENESS, I * ,. , ,, 

| healthfulness,! athletics, and the gymnasium as 

1 and | the complement of the class room, 

2 wholeness; i „ ... r , ,. . . 

| | the library, and the laboratory, 

i^-..*..........^..-..,,..,,,,.,.^ \yh en we know enough about the 

laws of physical development, we will be able to produce 
men of sound body without exception in our colleges. 
How different this conception is from that of the 
ancient world ! One of the authorities * on medicine 
in antiquity urged that there would have been no need 
for his science, if education had never afflicted men. 
How comforting to the unstudious mind! But how 
untrue! Also in recent years parents have sent their 
delicate children to college so as to enable them to make 
an easy living! What folly! But there is a germ of 
justification for such decision in that college life tends 
to build up the physical health. There is certainly no 
vestige of ground for thinking that education enables 



* Primoque medendi scientia sapientise pars habebatur, ut et 
morborum curatio et rerum naturae contemplatio sub eisdem auctoribus 
nata Bit, scilicet Us hanc maxime requirentibus , qui corporum suorum 
robora quieta cogitatione, nocturnaque vigilia minuerant. — Festus, 
De Medic, I Prooem. 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 165 

a man to secure an easy place in life. He who lives by 
his wits must pay a higher price for his existence than 
he who lives by the trades or by artisanship. But the 
healthfulness for which we are now pleading is more 
than a sound, vigorous body. It is more than is included 
in Juvenal's fine phrase "mens sana in corpore sano." 
It is rather a quality, a texture of life, a wholeness 
difficult to analyze, but capable of ready detection and 
that never fails to receive sincere appreciation. The 
man who has it is intensely human, yet grandly 
humane; reserved, yet affable; progressive, yet con- 
servative; simple, yet learned; devout, companionable, 
energetic, high in his hopes, noble in his aspirations, 
whole, clear-ringing in his response to every duty and 
privilege of life, vigorous, manly, healthful, and if there 
be any other virtue, it is briefly comprehended in him. 
Such healthfulness, such wholeness, such manhood, 
can but lead to the achievement of life's highest ends, 
if coupled with the elements of true success. 

What are these elements? They are varied and 
oftentimes temperamental. The good success is not to 
be achieved by following rules of conduct, but by nobly 

.. . __ living our life. Yet there are cer- 

f I tain elements that may be said to 

? coupled with £ be constant in its attainment, 
1 TH of true^ 8 • bein £ compounded in various de- 
| success. | grees with other variables, but yet 
I ! present in some measure in every 

* " • ' " ""•~*~* truly successful career — earmarks 

these of the life worth while, so to speak. Of these we 
may briefly treat. 

And first among these constant elements I would 
place fidelity to one's calling. I care not what a 



:THE LIFE-WORK. 



166 The Making of Men 

man's vocation is. I care greatly that he shall be 
faithful to it. The rolling stone gathers no moss. The 
unstable man is a weakling. The greatest care and 
,-.-..*...-....-....-.....*-......, prayerfulness should be employed 

f f in choosing the life's work, but 

f among which j w hen the choice has been made, a 

: WE NAME | _ „ . , „ 

| first— i man should be as faithful to it as 

L^ IDELITY TO i to the wife of his heart and home. 
There must be neither variableness 
nor shadow of turning in his 
devotion to his duty. I know there are men who make 
mistakes in their choice. It is their duty to change, 
but, if God be consulted in the choice, no mistake need 
occur. No man can afford to enter upon a life-work 
unless he is sure of the divine approval. When he has 
that, no hardship, no difficulty, can deter him from the 
pathway of his choice. Keep your eye on the faithful 
man. Verily shall he stand before princes, for he 
himself shall be a prince. The men who have excelled 
in the annals of achievement have been of this type. 
The men who are to-day startling the world by the 
brilliancy of their accomplishments are of this same 
character. Now it is a Taylor or a Brandeis teaching us 
out of years of obscure study the value of scientific man- 
agement. Now it is a Ben Lindsey emerging from Den- 
ver's Juvenile Court into world-prominence because a 
lifetime has been devoted to a vital problem. Now it is 
a Burbank creating new varieties of fruits and carpet- 
ing the desert with vegetation and greenness through 
long lapses of patient investigation and devotion to a 
single ideal. Now it is a Carnegie excelling in steel, or 
a Eockefeller masterful in oil, or a Marconi conquering 
the air, or a Higginson talking across a continent — all 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 167 

of them faithful to their life-work and blessing the 
world because of their devotion and fidelity. Without 
faith in your work and faithfulness to it you can do 
nothing but exist ; you cannot achieve. 

Great men always do more than their strict obliga- 
tion requires. They have never considered whether the 
thing requiring to be done came under their contract. 
i-^.^..*..^...-*...*-.-* Tne y na ve merely asked, Can I do 
f | it? And then they did it. They 

f joined with j flu their place full. They fill it 

| SUCH DEVOTION f r J 

i to duty as to ! till it runs over all-around, and 
f forget life's f then when a promotion is to be 

REWARDS. I , , , , . 

• i handed out and it is tendered 



•"*"• them, they are surprised to have 
been thought of as worthy of such consideration. They 
are too busy with their work to think of the reward or 
remuneration that is to come to them. They literally 
wake up to find themselves promoted without any con- 
scious effort in that direction. Let us learn from them 
the eternal truth of the matter — that the success worth 
having comes as a by-product, that a man should not 
work with his thought fixed on the goal of his ambition 
any more than with his eyes fastened on the clock or 
with his ears erect for the whistle. We are to be not 
time-servers, nor success-eravers, nor promotion-seekers, 
but joy- workers, serving with cheerfulness and doing 
with gladness whatever our hands find to do. Such 
service will be its own reward, but its re-reward will 
be promotion, good success, all the more valuable and 
joyous because it comes as a benediction to the conscien- 
tious, devoted worker. It is with achieving real success 
as with gaining an entrance to heaven : the reward 
should be swallowed up in the joy of service. He is a 



168 The Making op Men 

poor sort of Christian who regards religion as a fire- 
escape from hell and he is a poor sort of man whose 
service is rendered with Saturday's pay-envelope or 
check as the chief incentive of his effort. The way to 
get the good success that enriches the life of all is to 
forget it in joyous performance of every duty that 
presents itself. 

Another element entering into the career of the 
world's truly great men is their catholicity of interest 
and taste. This may seem to be at first glance incon- 
ji -,-,-„,„„„ ,,.,... sistent with their fidelity to their 
f j chosen work, but a closer consid- 

| and yet with | eration will reveal that the one is 

I other ? as necessar y as the other to major 

| interests. | men. Let a man be faithful to his 

I ! duty. Let him leave no stone 

4.^^-.-«.^^.~....~....^a unturned to make himself master 

in his chosen realm. But let him remember that a 
sitting hen never grows fat. Let him not be so narrow 
in his outlook on life that he becomes incapable of 
achieving the maximum of greatness to which his gifts 
may entitle him. Let him remember that great men 
are broad men and that ruts in any line always impede 
travel. Let him select an avocation or avocations, as 
he may prefer. Let him have at least one strong line 
on the side to which he may devote the leisure that he 
must take from his regular work. It frequently hap- 
pens that the life's real achievement is wrought out in 
this margin of time — the time which most men fritter 
away in idleness or frivolity, attending theaters and 
clubs and games. It was so in John Stuart Mill's case, 
who in his leisure hours after his day's work was done, 
as the drafter of telegrams for the Government Foreign 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 169 

Office, devoted himself to logic, ethics, and political 
economy. It was so in Charles Lamb's case, who 
devoted his margin of time, when the day's work as an 
under-secretary in the Civil Service of the English 
Government was completed with the fidelity and exact- 
ness for which he was famous, first to an afflicted sister 
and then, when her ravings were quieted, to the produc- 
tion of the Essays of Elia and his other matchless tales. 
It was so in Edmund Clarence Stedman's case, who 
when his laborious duties as banker were over, gave 
himself to literary criticism, producing the Victorian 
Poets — the monument more enduring than bronze by 
which posterity will gratefully remember him. It will 
perhaps prove to be so in Gladstone's case, whose chief - 
est contribution to his day, it seems to me, was not 
Jris statesmanship nor his classical scholarship, but his 
blessed book, wrought out in the hard-earned hours of 
his leisure, a book destined to steady the Ship of Zion 
in her onward voyage and to comfort many an anxious 
passenger on board, that book of splendid title, The 
Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture — the despair of 
carping critics and blatant infidels the world around. 
But whether your avocation be to you the avenue of 
your life's supreme achievement or not, you should by 
all means have an avocation. It will relieve the hard, 
dull tedium of your daily work. It will sweeten life. 
It will return you to your duties fresh and renewed in 
spirit and energy for greater faithfulness. It will make 
you sympathetic and companionable — two elements 
without which life is poor indeed. Blessed is the man 
that has a hobby in life. Blessed is the man that has 
some strong interest pursued aside from the dull, dead- 
ening routine of his vocational duties. Happy is he, 



170 The Making of Men 

for so shall he be able to render most efficient service 
when he returns from its pursuit to the regular round 
of daily tasks and obligations. Happiest is he who has 
found this vocation, this hobby, in spiritual ministra- 
tion to his fellows. The joy, the satisfaction, the 
unearned increment, the ever increasing returns of this 
delightful service! The avocation is undoubtedly a 
positive factor in yielding the largest results in voca- 
tional pursuits. We cannot work always at one thing, 
but change of work enables us to achieve more in our 
one thing than if we had labored at it unrelentingly. 
Lives of great men all teach this splendid truth. 

Good-fellowship, too, is one of the characteristic 
assets of the men who excel in life. Good-fellowship — 
rubies and precious stones and diamonds are not to be 
? ...-. ........ ... compared to her. Good-fellowship 

| J is more than agreeableness, more 

i and an f than abilitv as a good mixer, more 

1 ABUNDANT I ,, , _.. ., 

| seasoning of I than cleverness. These are its 
good- I veneer. These are skin deep. But 

: FELLOWSHIP. I , . .. _ . , , 

| } good-fellowship cannot be put on 

i.+-~*~.-„*~t , ■...,.., . „ i an( j gQ .j. cannot ru j3 Q ff Jf i g a 

soul quality; it enters into man's texture throughout; 
it is the unmistakable evidence of true gentility and 
humanity. A gentleman is so not because of polished 
manners. He has polished manners because he is a 
gentleman. A man is possessed of good-fellowship not 
because he is agreeable and companionable and affable 
and sympathetic. He exhibits all these splendid qual- 
ities, the enrichment of life, because he is possessed of 
good-fellowship. Good-fellowship always considers the 
other man's view-point and respects him as a fellow 
being and his opinion as sincere. When he is called 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 171 

upon to expose littleness, he does it in a big way. His 
exposure is so considerate that his opponents honor 
him. He states the truth without venom, without 
sarcasm, with such respect for others' prejudices, with 
such moderation and tenderness, that his very manner, 
the outcropping of his good-fellowship, lends weight 
and power to his argument. The manner in which a 
thing is said or done or gone at makes all the difference 
in the world. The secret of the leadership of men is 
here exposed. It is sometimes called tact, sometimes 
resourcefulness, sometimes diplomacy. These are all 
reflections only of the soul's texture within, exhalations 
of the breath of the spirit's deep-seated inward good- 
fellowship. Lack of this sterling quality may bring 
the greatest talents to ineffectualness. It was so of 
Gladstone's great compeer, Kobert Lowe, the Viscount 
of Sherbrooke, who died in 1892 unhonored, unwept, 
unsung. Yet he was once universally conceded to be 
the great premier's equal in oratorical power, his 
superior in intellectual grasp and acumen. His venom, 
his bitterness, his sarcasm, his inability to appreciate 
his opponent's sincerity, his bluntness in debate, in a 
word, his lack of good-fellowship relegated him to 
obscurity and a great light went out into the night of 
oblivion. He is seen as in a mirror in an incident as 
oral examiner at Oxford. To the question : "How are 
things going?" he is reputed to have replied: "Oh, fine; 
five men have failed already and the sixth is quite 
shaky." Splendid ability thus rendered nugatory 
because of unfriendliness in the man's make-up ! Culti- 
vate friendliness, therefore ; seek for good-fellowship. 
If it is a native endowment, give thanks and go 
forward. If it is not, pray and labor till the new birth 



172 The Making op Men 

into good-fellowship comes, as come it will, because 
without it your life will be an iceberg in its stateliness, 
chilling all around you, rather than the leaping, laugh- 
ing, rollicksome fountain, giving life and joy and glad- 
ness to every one who shall be so fortunate as to come 
under your influence. 

Finally, these men had deep and vital interest in the 
spiritual life. Nothing so makes little men big ones, 
nothing so transforms pigmies into giants, as relating 
......... „. .„.„.„. them to the Kingdom of God. 

I * Peter would have ever remained a 

I the whol-e f vulgar, swearing fisherman and 
1 CR «r^™T T ITH 1 Matthew a cringing tax-collector 
? power. T and Paul a bigoted Pharisee but 

| | for the quickening touch of Jesus 

a.^^.»-^^.^.......,..,..,...^a Christ. When He had come into 

their lives, Peter was able to preach his pentecostal 
sermon and Matthew to write his matchless biography 
and Paul to plant the Church of God firmly in the great 
centers of the world's population and to defend the 
gospel against the intellectual and religious leaders of 
his day. Wonderful transformations! And yet these 
transformations are being wrought every day in every 
land. Now as always God exalts those who humbly 
seek Him and blesses them with every good thing, bring- 
ing them to honor and greatness among their fellows. 
Great is our God and greatly to be praised: His ways 
are past finding out. But there can be no doubt that 
He makes those great who trust Him most and do His 
will most faithfully. God cannot permit those who 
oppose Him to achieve lasting greatness. They are 
remembered only to be execrated. Of the 15,142 great 
Americans spoken of above, those who were not devout 



Achieving Manhood's Goal 173 

Christians can be counted almost on the fingers of the 
hand. Even those few are destined to decrease as men 
have time to arrive at a clear estimate and correct 
valuation of their lives. Consider the men of paramount 
influence in American life and thought to-day. How 
many of them are open opponents of the Church ? Only 
one, and even he is relenting, having recently declared 
that world-peace, the dream of his life, can be accom- 
plished only through the power of the Christian Church. 
Splendid thought! God cannot be God and permit 
infidels and skeptics and atheists and agnostics to come 
to permanent greatness. The things of the Kingdom 
are the vital things in life. Those Who advance them 
are mankind's benefactors. Those who retard them are 
their enemies. But aside from any consideration as to 
greatness and its dependence upon man's spiritual 
relationships, the Christian life is a thing of such 
beauty, such charm, such sweetness that no man can 
afford to be without it. He cannot be a complete man 
and leave his spiritual nature undeveloped and unculti- 
vated, and therefore he cannot be a complete man 
without being a Christian. "And what is a man 
profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for 
his own soul ?" "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 
His righteousness," for "then thou shalt have good 
success." 



Some Books Published By 

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FORTY YEARS ON THE FIRING LINE 

Or Scenes, Incidents, and Experiences Along the 

Way of a Soldier of the Cross 

By J. Pressley Barrett, D. D. 

Contains 352 pages; numerous half-tone illustra- 
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THE CHRISTIANS AND THE GREAT 

COMMISSION 

By Josiah G. Bishop, D. D. 

A brief history of the Home and Foreign Mission- 
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pages. Cloth binding. Price, postpaid, $1.00 per 
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A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN DENOMINA- 
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By Milo True Morrill, M. A., D. D. 

A history of the movement inaugurating and per- 
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tracing its development from the year 1794 down to 
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CHILDREN'S MISSIONARY STORIES 

By Alice Moreton Burnett 

A compilation of thirty interesting, instructive 
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Some of the Important Events of both Home Mis- 
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A handsome, attractive volume. Price, red cloth 
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CAMPBELLISM IS REBELLION 

By J. J. Summerbell, D. D. 

An interesting book, containing scriptural 
quotations bearing on the theories and teachings of 
Alexander Campbell, and proof texts critically ex- 
amined both in English and Greek. 272 pages. 
Price, postpaid, $1.35 per copy. 



WRITINGS AND ADDRESSES OF AUSTIN 

CRAIG 

Edited by Martyn Summerbell, D. D., LL. D. 

A superb collection of good things from the pen of 
that very able minister, educator, and leader in the 
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433 pages, 8 illustrations, 24 chapters. Price, $1.50, 
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THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

By Thos. Holmes, D. D., LL. D. 

A study provoker — the product of new thought 
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